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THE  DRIFT  TOWARD  RELIGION 


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THE 

DRIFT  TOWARD 

RELIGION 


by 
ALBERT  W.  PALMER 


•     !  t  »  I  t    •«  / 


THE    PILGRIM    PRESS 
BOSTON      NEW  YORK      CHICAGO 


Copyright  1914 
By  LUTHER  H.  CARY 


-f 


THE    PILGRIM    PRESS 
BOSTON 


To  my  mother  on  her  seventieth  birthday 
and  to  my  father  in  memory  of  evenings 
when  he  read  aloud  many  good  books 
to  his  small  boy 


397543 


PREFACE 

President  Wilson,  in  an  address  at  the  Greek 
Theater  at  the  University  of  California,  once 
said  that  the  trouble  with  most  of  us  is  that 
when  we  know  enough  to  write  one  chapter  we 
insist  on  writing  a  book — filling  in  the  other 
chapters  with  other  men's  opinions! 

The  author  of  this  book  disclaims  enough 
originality  for  even  one  chapter!  The  whole 
book  is  filled  with  unconscious  plagiarism,  with 
other  men's  ideas  the  sources  of  which  have 
been  forgotten,  and  probably  the  only  original 
thing  about  it  is  the  order  in  which  the  ideas 
are  marshalled.  It  simply  represents  the  effort 
of  a  young  minister  to  justify  religion  to  the 
thoughtful  people  of  a  modern  western  city. 
It  is  not  an  argument  so  much  as  it  is  a  con- 
fession of  faith — albeit  a  confession  of  faith 
not  fantastic  nor  irrational,  but  made  after  a 
university  education  and  in  the  full  and  glad 
acceptance  of  the  modern  point  of  view. 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  .  PAGE 

Preface vii 

I    The  Drift  Toward  Religion    ....        1 
Manifold  Evidences  of  the  Tendency  toward 
Religion — Forces    Impelling    This    Religious 
Reawakening — Our     Attitude     toward     It — 
Practical  Mysticism 

II    God 19 

Why  We  Believe  in  God— How  We  Think  of 
Him — Is  God  Personal? — An  Interpretation 
of  Prayer 

III  The  Bible 31 

Increased  Study  of  the  Bible — Its  Literary 
Form — The  Personality  of  the  Gospels — Pro- 
gressive Inspiration  of  the  Bible — Bible 
Times  and  Modem  Times — Supreme  Value 
of  the  Bible 

IV  Jesus 47 

Jesus  the  Man — The  Supreme  Teacher  and 
the  Supreme  Example — The  Tremendous 
Personal  Influence  of  Jesus — Jesus  the 
World's  Picture  of  God — Humanity  and  the 
Divinity  of  Christ— The  Virgin  Birth— The 
Miracles — The  Resurrection — The  Atonement 
— Essential  Christianity 

V    Immortality 65 

The  Unseen — Brain  and  Soul — The  Instinct 
of  Immortality— The  Fact  of  Christ— The 
Moral  Integrity  of  the  Universe — Human  In- 
completeness— Personality  and  the  Subcon- 
scious— Three  Lives — The  Judgment,  Heaven 
and  Hell 


Contents 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

VI    Religion  in  Daily  Life 83 

The  Mystery  of  Evil— The  Hebrew  Solution 
— The  Solution  of  the  Christian  Scientists — 
How  to  Regard  Moral  Evil — Pain  and  Suf- 
fering— Enduring  and  Imagining — Suffering 
and  Character — The  Example  of  Christ — 
Some  Spiritual  Ideals  for  Daily  Living — The 
Test  of  a  Life 

VII    The  Church 101 

The  Early  Church— The  Church  of  the  Mid- 
dle Ages — The  Reformation — Modem  Prot- 
estant Denominations — The  Church  of  Today 
and  Its  Task — The  Church  as  a  Public  Serv- 
ice Corporation — The  Church  of  Today  and 
(1)  Church  Unity,  (2)  Youth,  (3)  the  Social 
Message  and  (4)  the  Lives  of  Men 


CHAPTEE  I 
THE   DRIFT   TOWAED  RELIGION 


L 


CHAPTER  I 
THE  DRIFT  TOWARD  RELIGION 

ESS  than  twenty  years  ago  Henry  Van 
Dyke  gave  a  course  of  lectures  at  Yale  on 
*^The  Gospel  for  An  Age  of  Doubf  Those 
lectures  in  printed  form  were  put  into  my 
hands  as  an  undergraduate  at  The  University 
of  California.  They  contained  this  striking 
characterization  of  the  age:  **The  questioning 
spirit  of  today  is  severe  but  not  bitter,  restless 
but  not  frivolous;  it  takes  itself  very  seri- 
ously and  applies  its  methods  of  criticism,  of 
analysis,  of  dissolution,  with  a  sad  courtesy  of 
demeanor,  to  the  deepest  and  most  vital 
truths  of  religion,  the  being  of  God,  the  reality 
of  the  soul,  the  possibility  of  a  future  life. 
Its  coat-of-arms  is  an  interrogation  point  ram- 
pant, above  three  bishops  dormant,  and  its 
motto  is  Query  f 

A  little  later,  in  my  senior  year,  I  came  across 
a  poem  which  seemed  to  express  almost  per- 
fectly the  spiritual  mood  in  which  I  lived.  It 
was  Matthew  Arnold's  ** Dover  Beach": 

"Come  to  the  window,  sweet  is  the  night-air! 
Only,  from  the  long  line  of  spray 
Where  the  sea  meets  the  moon-blanched  sand, 
Listen !  you  hear  the  grating  roar 

[3] 


i.j'^rTJi^  b.rift  Toward  Religion 

Of  pebbles  whi'cli  the  waves  draw  back,  and  fling, 
At  their  return,  up  the  high  strand. 
Begin  and  cease,  and  then  again  begin. 
With  tremulous  cadence  slow,  and  bring 
The  eternal  note  of  sadness  in. 

"Sophocles  long  ago 
Heard  it  on  the  -^gean,  and  it  brought 
Into  his  mind  the  turbid  ebb  and  flow 
Of  human  misery :  we 
Find  also  in  the  sound  a  thought. 
Hearing  it  by  this  distant  northern  sea. 

"The  sea  of  faith 

Was  once,  too,  at  the  full,  and  round  earth's  shore 
Lay  like  the  folds  of  a  bright  girdle  furled. 
But  now  I  only  hear 
Its  melancholy,  long,  withdrawing  roar, 
Retreating,  to  the  breath 
Of  the  night-wind,  down  the  vast  edges  drear 
And  naked  shingles  of  the  world. 

"Ah,  love,  let  us  be  true 
To  one  another!  for  the  world,  which  seems 
To  lie  before  us  like  a  land  of  dreams. 
So  various,  so  beautiful,  so  new. 
Hath  really  neither  joy,  nor  love,  nor  light. 
Nor  certitude,  nor  peace,  nor  help  for  pain ; 
And  we  are  here  as  on  a  darkling  plain 
Swept  with  confused  alarms  of  struggle  and  flight, 
Where  ignorant  armies  clash  by  night." 

The  sentence  by  Van  Dyke  and  the  poem  by 
Matthew  Arnold  sum  up  the  impression  of 
religion  which  largely  colored  my  undergradu- 
ate days.  Religion  was  obsolescent,  something 
to  be  apologized  for — ^beautiful  in  a  way  but 
destined  to  early  death. 

[4] 


The  Drift  Toward  Religion 

'  But  now  the  tide  has  turned;  the  drift  is  to- 
ward religion. 

It  is  so  in  my  own  case — personal  experi- 
ence during  the  last  ten  years  has  deepened 
and  strengthened  my  own  religious  attitude  to- 
ward life.  As  I  look  back  at  my  college  days 
I  realize  that  it  was  a  very  small  cargo  of 
religious  faith  with  which  I  emerged  on  Com- 
mencement Day.  I  had  thrown  overboard  the 
miracles,  eternal  punishment,  the  scheme  of 
salvation,  the  atonement,  and  the  infallibility 
of  the  Bible.  I  wrote  to  my  friend  the  minister 
of  the  church  at  home:  **You  suggest  my  going 
into  the  ministry!  Why,  I  am  not  even  sure 
I  am  a  Christian!  I  don't  believe  in  the  Bible 
or  the  miracles  or  the  Virgin  Birth  or  much 
of  anything  else.*' 

He  wrote  back  to  me  these  wise  words 
of  counsel:  **But  you  do  believe  in  the  Golden 
Eule,  the  Lord's  Prayer  and  the  Sermon  on  the 
Mount.  Then  make  these  your  religion.  Try 
to  live  up  to  this  much  of  Christianity  and  put 
the  other  questions  up  on  a  high  shelf  and 
wait.  Maybe  some  day  you  will  be  able  to  take 
them  down  and  see  them  in  a  new  light.  In 
the  mean  time  you  will  have  enough  to  do  in 
living  up  to  what  you  can  accept. ' ' 

It  was  admirable  advice  and  it  kept  me 
from  reacting  utterly  against  religion  and  the 
Church.  Then  in  my  senior  year  came  a  never- 
to-be-forgotten  course  in  Tennyson  and  Brown- 
ing out  of  which  I  came  feeling,  **Well,  if  this 

[5] 


The  Drift  Toward  Religion 

sort  of  interpretation  of  life  isn't  true,  it  ought 
to  beP'  Then  came  William  James*  essay, 
**The  Will  to  Believe.*'  With  this  religious 
equipment  I  graduated  from  the  university. 

In  the  thirteen  years  since  then  my  religious 
outlook  has  grown.  Year  by  year  faith  has 
deepened  and  sweetened.  One  by  one  I  have 
taken  down  some  things  from  the  high  shelf, 
reinterpreted  them  in  the  light  of  a  larger 
experience  in  life  and  added  them  to  my  pos- 
sessions. There  are  still  some  things  up  there 
on  the  shelf — but  I  am  not  worrying  about  them 
any  more.  They  help  to  make  the  future  seem 
interesting ! 

I  am  convinced  that  this  experience  is  no 
merely  personal  one — it  is  also  in  part  the  expe- 
rience of  the  age.  The  drift  toward  religion 
is  on  in  many  departments  of  life.  Who  would 
have  been  rash  enough  to  have  prophesied 
twenty  years  ago,  for  example,  that  in  mate- 
rialistic Chicago  a  great  political  party  would 
be  born  which  would  spontaneously  choose 
as  its  marching  song  **  Onward,  Christian 
Soldiers '  *  ?  Who  could  then  have  foreseen  the 
subsequent  development  of  Christian  Science 
and  the  whole  New  Thought  Movement  in  an- 
swer to  spiritual  hunger?  For,  though  one 
cannot  be  blind  to  the  possibility  of  tragedy 
in  Christian  Science  and  the  occasional  foolish- 
ness in  New  Thought,  an  impartial  observer 
must  recognize  that  these  forms  of  religious  ex- 
pression   have    made    progress    not    by    the 

[6] 


The  Drift   Toward  Religion 

vagaries  which  attach  to  them  like  barnacles 
but  by  the  motive  power  of  their  spiritual 
idealism. 

In  academic  and  scientific  circles  we  find  the 
drift  toward  religion  in  the  philosophies  of 
Rudolph  Eucken  and  Henri  Bergson  and  in  the 
utterances  of  Sir  Oliver  Lodge,  while  in  the 
business  and  commercial  world  it  is  evidenced 
in  the  millions  of  dollars  poured  out  to  erect 
buildings  for  The  Young  Men's  and  Young 
Women's  Christian  Associations  and  in  the 
growing  respect  for  foreign  missionaries.  Time 
was  when  foreign  missionary  enterprise  was 
a  mere  foolish  sentimentality  to  be  tolerated 
but  despised,  but  in  these  new  days  even  the 
proverbial  **man  in  the  street''  has  awakened 
to  the  fact  that,  in  view  of  recent  history  in 
China  and  Turkey  and  Albania,  the  missionary 
is  in  reality  a  statesman  and  a  pioneer  of  all 
that  is  best  and  noblest  in  civilization. 

This  religious  quickening  is  apparent  in  the 
fiction  of  today.  I  do  not  have  time  to  read 
many  novels,  but  recently  I  have  carefully 
studied  three  works  of  fiction  which  are  alto- 
gether inspiring  in  their  religious  significance. 
One  was  **The  Fear  of  Living"  by  Henry 
Bordeaux.  This  is  the  story  of  a  fine,  coura- 
geous old  woman,  strengthened  through  suffer- 
ing by  her  religious  faith,  over  against  a  back- 
ground of  selfish  pleasure-seeking  people  who 
are  afraid  of  hardship— paralyzed,  as  it  were, 
by  ''The  Fear  of  Living."    The  second  novel 

[7] 


,The  Drift  Toward  Religion 

was  **The  Way  Home''  by  Basil  King,  the 
story  of  a  man  who  deserted  his  ideals  and 
started  out  to  live  in  materialism  and  undis- 
guised selfishness,  only  to  find  himself  driven 
at  last  by  the  logic  of  life  back  to  the  ideals 
which  he  thought  he  had  parted  with  forever. 
The  third  novel  was  *  *  The  Inside  of  the  Cup, ' ' 
easily  the  most  widely-discussed  book  of  the 
year,  a  frank  and  enthusiastic  setting  forth  of 
the  newer  thought  of  the  day  on  various  reli- 
gious questions. 

But  even  closer  than  the  novel  to  the  heart 
of  any  age  is  the  drama,  and  the  religious  spirit 
of  the  modern  drama  is  remarkable.  Have  you 
heard  and  comprehended  that  really  great  al- 
legory of  modern  religious  life,  **The  Servant 
in  the  House''?  And  do  you  realize  that  it  has 
been  from  every  point  of  view  one  of  the  most 
successful  plays?  Have  you  heard  Forbes- 
Eobertson  in  * '  The  Passing  of  the  Third  Floor 
Back"?  Did  *^The  Blue  Bird"  bring  you  no 
message  from  the  land  of  the  ideal?  Can  you 
ever  forget  that  great  scene  in  ^^The  Piper" 
where  the  Piper  himself  argues  with  the  lonely 
man,  the  crucified  figure  of  the  wayside  shrine, 
and  at  last  surrenders  his  will  to  Christ's? 
From  the  revival  of  ** Everyman"  a  few  years 
ago  to  **The  Wolf  of  Gubbio,"  published  last 
December,  the  modern  drama  is  overflowing 
with  religion.  How  wonderfully  it  all  contrasts 
with  the  hopelessness  of  the  lines  of  **  Dover 
Beach"! 

[8] 


The  Drift   Toward  Religion 

Why?  Why  this  drift  toward  religion?  It  is 
altogether  possible  that  we  cannot  tell.  Forces 
are  at  work  which  we  cannot  fully  understand 
nor  anticipate. 

"We  cannot   kindle,  when  we  will 
The  fires  that  in  the  heart  reside; 
The  spirit  bloweth  and  is  still, 
In  mystery  our  souls  abide.'' 

But  so  far  as  we  can  lay  hold  on  the  causes  of 
this  religious  reawakening  it  seems  to  me  we 
must  include  these  three: 

(1)  The  emergence  of  the  modern  point  of 
view  in  religious  thought — what  is  sometimes 
called  **the  new  theology.^'  We  suffered  fif- 
teen years  ago  because  our  religious  traditions 
and  our  scientific  instruction  were  hopelessly 
at  war  with  one  another.  Religion  was  so  univer- 
sal in  the  life  of  the  Middle  Ages  partly  be- 
cause then  religion  and  science  harmonized — 
went  hand  in  hand.  When  religion  and  science 
seemed  to  disagree  it  was  inevitable  that  many 
intelligent  men  should  sadly  but  firmly  consign 
religion  to  the  realm  of  outgrown  even  though 
quaint  and  beautiful  antiquities.  We  have  all 
met  men  who  advised  us  to  *^read  the  King 
James  Version  of  the  Bible  simply  for  its  beau- 
tiful English/'  at  the  same  time  implying  that 
they  had  long  since  passed  beyond  getting  out 
of  it  anything  more  vital  than  a  pure  English 
style. 

But  there  are  not  lacking  indications  that 

[9] 


The  Drift   Toward  Religion 

we  are  going  to  approximate  once  more  the 
condition  where  scientific  and  religious  thought 
are  allies,  as  science  and  true  religion  must  ever 
he.  For  the  new  theology  is  primarily  a  scien- 
tific theology,  recording  gladly  all  facts  attained 
by  scientific  investigation.  What  this  modern 
religious  thought  is — how  it  finds  reinforcement 
in  modern  science,  how  it  demands  no  false  sur- 
renders from  men  and  women  trained  in  the  sci- 
entific spirit — this  book  seeks  to  set  forth. 

To  men  and  women  who  dread  and  fear  the 
new  theology  may  I  offer  the  parable  of  the 
aqueduct  and  the  pipe  line  ?  A  city  in  Italy  long 
ago  obtained  its  water,  pure  and  clear,  from 
the  mountains  far  away  across  the  plain  by 
conveying  it  in  a  long  aqueduct  carried  high 
above  the  surrounding  country,  part  of  the  way 
on  lofty  arches.  But  as  the  centuries  passed 
these  arches  fell  into  decay — some  of  them  were 
faultily  constructed  and  earthquakes  shook 
them  down — and  so  the  aqueduct  was  broken 
in  places  and  water  no  longer  flowed  through  it 
to  the  city.  Then  in  our  own  day  came  men  with 
modern  equipment,  who  laid  a  pipe  line  from 
the  city  to  the  mountain  springs.  The  pipe  line 
followed  the  same  general  direction  as  the  old 
aqueduct  and  it  drew  its  water  from  the  same 
source,  and  when  at  length  it  was  completed 
the  water  poured  through  it  into  the  city  and 
was  distributed,  clear  and  sparkling,  in  a  hun- 
dred fountains. 

For  the  great  majority  of  college-trained 
[10] 


The  Drift   Toward  Religion 

men  and  women  the  traditional  theology  is  a 
broken  aqueduct,  interesting,  picturesque,  not 
altogether  unloved,  but  broken  at  certain  vital 
points  and  therefore  no  longer  capable  of  bring- 
ing water  into  the  modern  world  to  quench  its 
spiritual  thirst.  If  we  had  to  choose  between 
the  traditional  theology  of  our  childhood  and 
agnosticism,  we  should  sadly  but  of  necessity 
become  agnostics.  But  no  such  sad  necessity  is 
upon  us.  God  fulfills  himself  in  various  ways 
and  the  new  theology  is  the  inevitable  accom- 
paniment of  the  new  science  and  the  new  learn- 
ing. By  it  men  are  simply  seeking  along  more 
modern  lines  to  tap  the  great  mountain 
reservoirs  of  spiritual  truth  and  bring  to  the 
thirsty  fountains  of  our  spiritual  city  the  same 
water  of  eternal  life  and  inspiration  which  in 
other  days  flowed  in  the  aqueduct. 

(2)  A  second  force  setting  in  motion  this 
drift  toward  religion  is  undoubtedly  the  modern 
emphasis  upon  the  social  message  of  Chris- 
tianity. Books  like  Peabody  's  * '  Social  Message 
of  Jesus*'  and  Eauschenbusch's  ''Christianity 
and  the  Social  Crisis,''  to  mention  only  two 
where  many  could  be  cited,  are  in  part  results 
and  in  part  causes  of  this  awakening  of  social 
religion. 

This  social  emphasis  has  given  to  religion 
what  it  sorely  needed— a  larger  and  more  ade- 
quate conception  of  salvation.  The  old  salva- 
tion which  we  were  told  about  in  Sunday  school 
and  to  which  the  revivalists  invited  us  was  a 

[11] 


The  Drift   Toward  Religion 

narrow  and  selfish  thing.  But  here  comes  the 
great  vision  of  social  salvation — nothing  petty 
or  selfish  about  it — calling  for  all  of  a  man's 
reserves  of  power  and  consecration  to  bring 
it  even  partially  to  pass  in  the  coromunity  of 
which  he  is  a  citizen.  The  man  who  goes  forth 
to  meet  the  gigantic  social  problems  of  city  life 
— or  of  country  life  either,  for  that  matter — 
soon  comes  to  realize  his  need  of  every  possible 
reinforcement  both  for  the  cause  he  would  ad- 
vance and  for  his  own  personal  renewal.  Hence 
the  rediscovery  of  religion  as  a  social  force  and 
a  secret  of  personal  power  and  inspiration.  It 
is  no  accident  that  by  far  the  most  popular  and 
successful  department  of  The  Men  and  Religion 
Movement  was  that  of  social  service,  that  So- 
cialism is  becoming  distinctly  more  religious, 
that  such  a  magazine  as  *  *  The  Survey ' '  is  edited 
by  religious  people  in  a  spirit  sympathetic  to- 
ward the  church  and  that  the  Y.  M.  C.  A.  was 
chosen  by  the  government  to  care  for  its  wel- 
fare work  for  employees  in  the  Canal  Zone.  The 
very  size  and  menace  of  certain  social  prob- 
lems, the  high-minded  courageous  service  they 
require,  the  challenge  they  present  to  idealism 
and  to  faith,  all  combine  to  drive  men  and 
women  who  are  socially  minded  back  to  some 
vital  religious  life.  To  set  forth  what  such 
a  socially-sensitive  and  not  merely  individualis- 
tic religion  might  be  is  one  of  the  objects  of 
this  book. 

(3)     The  third  and  deepest  cause  of  this  mod- 
[12] 


The  Drift   Toward  Eeligio 


n 


ern  drift  toward  religion  is  the  unquenchable 
nature  of  the  religious  instinct.  The  philos- 
ophy of  Bergson  has  given  us  a  new  respect 
for  instincts:  they  have  cosmic  significance; 
they  reveal  the  presence  of  mighty  forces.  You 
may  lose  yourself  for  a  while  in  the  solution  of 
physical  problems — in  digging  deep  and  build- 
ing high — you  may  even  lose  yourself  in  the 
material  luxuries  which  come  as  a  reward  for 
the  solving  of  such  physical  problems,  but  ul- 
timately you  will  come  back  again  to  the  haunt- 
ing questions  of  religion. 

"When  the  mind  is  mapped  as  streets  are — ^row  on  row; 
"When  the  heart  is  tamed  from  Love's  unreasoning  throe; 
When  the  poet's  winged  fancy 
Is  an  outgrown  necromancy; 
When  the  rain  of  inspiration  turns  to  snow: 
What  then? 

"When  all  doubts  and  fears  alike  are  backward  cast; 
When  the  dream  of  world-wide  Brotherhood  is  past; 
When  the  prophet's  radiant  vision 
Is  too  futile  for  derision ; 
When  the  soul  is  but  a  formula  at  last: 
What  then? 

"When  the  fierce  machine  has  conquered  flesh  and  blood; 
When  the  labor-power  is  belt  and  wheel  and  rod; 
When  the  unfit  nations  wonder 
At  the  gold  we  stagger  under; 
When  the  world  is  but  an  economic  clod: 
What  then?" 

It  is  a  part  of  the  object  of  this  book  to  jus- 
tify this  religious  instinct  and  to  make  it  easier 

[13] 


The  Drift   Toward  Religion 

for  thoughtful  men  and  women  to  respond  to 
it  and  guide  it  instead  of  striving  vainly  to 
quench  or  disown  it. 

Since  the  drift  toward  religion  is  on — what 
then?  How  shall  we  respond  to  this  tendency 
of  our  age? 

Well,  first  of  all,  let  us  rejoice  in  it.  Let 
us  cease  to  be  apologetic  for  religion  or  the 
Church.  The  ** go-to-church  Sunday''  which 
has  recently  become  so  popular  is  an  indication 
of  a  better  attitude  on  the  part  of  the  general 
public.  Eeligion  is  a  part  of  life — historically 
and  psychologically.  Let  that  man  be  ashamed 
and  apologetic  who  does  not  share  in  this  great 
human  experience! 

In  the  second  place,  let  us  be  tolerant.  It 
would  be  a  sad  thing  if  the  drift  toward  religion 
meant  any  drift  back  into  the  odium  theologi- 
cum,  into  the  denominational  warfare  and 
theological  strife  which  have  disgraced  the 
past.  Let  us  give  to  every  man  the  utmost 
freedom  of  thought  and  expression  in  his  reli- 
gious life.  After  all,  the  real  gulf  is  not  be- 
tween those  who  hold  one  religious  belief  and 
those  who  defend  another — ^between  those  who 
believe  in  the  Virgin  Birth  and  those  who  do 
not,  between  those  who  hold  to  the  Apostolic 
Succession  and  those  who  do  not.  Such  differ- 
ences as  these  are  mere  surface  grooves  when 
compared  to  the  real  gulf  which  exists  between 
all  those  who  seek  to  live  the  life  of  the  spirit 
and  those  who  regard  life  with  a  brutal  selfish- 

[14] 


The  Drift   Toward  Religion 

ness  and  a  cynical  disregard  for  all  ideals.  Some 
one  has  said  of  foreign  missions:  **It  is  hard 
to  discuss  forms  of  baptism  in  the  presence  of 
a  man  engaged  in  worshipping  a  cow. ' '  Let  us 
not  waste  energy  in  unbrotherly  controversy  in 
the  face  of  the  cynical  materialism  which  is  a 
foe  to  all  religion  and  all  ideals. 

Finally,  let  us  be  open-minded  in  this  glad 
new  day  of  religious  quickening.  It  is  alto- 
gether probable  that  new  light  is  already  break- 
ing across  the  hills.  Let  us  be  ready  to  receive 
it.  From  Socialism,  from  Christian  Science, 
from  psychology,  from  modern  thinkers  like 
Tolstoy,  Ibsen  and  Maeterlinck,  from  the  fem- 
inist movement,  from  the  life  of  Japan  and  the 
thought  of  India — from  all  the  word  of  God 
in  all  places  of  his  creation  who  shall  say  what 
new  light  may  not  break  forth  for  us!  Let 
us  not  be  either  credulous  like  children  or  hide- 
bound like  bigots,  but  let  us  be  open-minded, 
ready  to  find  profitable  every  writing  inspired 
of  God. 

A  new  type  of  religious  leader  is  about  to 
stand  forth.  I  like  to  call  him  the  practical 
mystic. 

Each  age  has  produced  that  type  of  religious 
life  best  suited  to  its  needs:  the  first  century 
stands  revealed  in  St.  Paul  the  missionary,  the 
centuries  following  contribute  the  martyrs  to 
our  wealth  of  Christian  heroism,  the  Middle 
Ages  make  their  gift  in  crusaders  like  St. 
Louis  and  in  St.  Francis,  the  little  poor  man 

[15] 


The  Drift  Toward  Religion 

of  Assisi,  who  sang  to  the  sun  and  the  birds 
and  ministered  to  the  poor  and  the  outcast. 
Out  of  the  awakening  of  the  Renaissance  come 
the  great  reformers — Wyclif ,  Huss,  Savonarola 
and  Luther — and  out  of  the  reconstruction 
period  come  the  theologians  from  Calvin  and 
Grotius  to  Jonathan  Edwards  and  Horace 
Bushnell.  The  nineteenth  century  as  its  pecu- 
liar gift  brings  the  evangelists — Finney,  Moody, 
Drummond. 

And  now  comes  the  new  day  in  which  we 
live — a  day  of  social  reconstruction  and  spir- 
itual quickening.  The  typical  Christian  of 
this  new  day  will  be  the  practical  mystic.  He 
will  be  a  mystic — sensitive  to  the  spiritual 
values  of  life  and  its  deepest  music — but  he 
will  be  also  a  man  of  practical  power — facing 
the  social  problems  of  the  age  and  contributing 
to  their  solution.  He  will  be  like  Moses,  who 
*  ^  endured  as  seeing  Him  that  is  invisible. ' '  The 
vision  is  essential  to  the  endurance!  Behind 
Moses  the  deliverer  forever  stands  Moses  the 
poet,  finding  the  desert  bush  aflame  with  God, 
and  behind  Moses  the  lawgiver  and  civic  organ- 
izer stands  Moses  the  mystic,  coming  down 
from  Sinai  with  the  divine  light  shining  on  his 
face. 

The  meaning  of  the  drift  toward  religion  is 
that  the  practical  men  of  our  age  are  feeling 
out,  oftentimes  blindly,  for  the  power  of  mys- 
ticism. The  meaning  of  the  new  emphasis  on 
social  Christianity  is  that  the  mysticism  of  to- 

[16] 


The  Drift   Toward  Religion 

day  is  ready  to  link  itself  to  the  great  practical 
tasks  of  life.  Men  like  Dr.  Grenfell  and  Pro- 
fessor Rauschenbush,  to  go  no  farther,  admi- 
rably illustrate  what  I  mean  by  the  term 
*  *  practical  mystic. ' ' 

This  book  is  written  primarily  to  help  prac- 
tical people  to  be  mystics  also  and  to  gain  from 
religion,  vision,  comfort,  and  reserve  power. 


[17] 


CHAPTER  n 
GOD 


CHAPTER  II 
GOD 

"A  garden  is  a  lovesome  thing,  God  wot! 
Rose  plot, 
Fringed  pool, 
Fern'd  grot — 
The  veriest  school 
Of  Peace;  and  yet  the  fool 
Contends  that  God  is  not — 
Not  God!  in  gardens  I  when  the  eve  is  cool? 
Nay,  but  I  have  a  sign; 
'Tis  very  sure  God  walks  in  mine." 

I  CANNOT  hope  to  persuade  you  of  the  exist- 
ence of  God  if  you  have  not  already  some- 
times found  him  walking  in  the  garden  of  your 
life.  But  if  you  have  found  him  there,  the  fol- 
lowing considerations  may  help  to  clarify  your 
vision  of  him  and  make  your  faith  more  uni- 
form and  constant. 

Doubtless  most  of  us  believe  in  God  a  great 
deal  more  than  we  realize.  The  trouble  is  that 
we  do  not  carry  our  belief  up  into  the  higher 
levels;  we  stop  short  of  the  goal.  We  believe 
quite  readily  in  the  Power  which  controls  and 
unifies  physical  forces — the  God,  if  you  please, 
of  chemistry  and  physics — ^but  we  often  fail 
to  recognize  the  no  less  inevitable  Power  be- 
hind consciousness,  behind  artistic  and  moral 

[21] 


The  Drift   Toward  Religion 

impulses — the  God  of  personality !  As  a  matter 
of  fact,  I  believe  we  are  on  the  verge  of  a  great 
awakening  to  the  presence  of  God.  The  old 
conception  of  God  as  an  anthropomorphic  being 
who  made  the  world  as  a  watchmaker  might 
make  a  watch,  and  then  sat  outside  of  it  seeing 
the  wheels  go  round  and  breaking  in  upon  the 
machinery  only  occasionally  to  work  a  miracle — 
to  clean  a  pivot  or  adjust  a  spring — this 
conception  of  an  absentee  deity  who  can 
be  conducted  to  the  edge  of  the  universe  and 
politely  bowed  out  has  passed  away  for  most 
modern  men.  With  this  passing  there  has  also 
passed,  in  too  many  cases,  any  potent  faith  in 
any  God  at  all. 

But  there  are  not  lacking  signs  that  this  tran- 
sition period  during  which  we  have  been 

"Wandering  between  two  worlds,  one  dead, 
The   other   powerless   to   be   bom," 

to  use  the  sad,  reluctant  words  of  Matthew 
Arnold  in  **The  Grande  Chartreuse,'*  has  prac- 
tically ended.  The  new  era  is  already  born,  and 
humanity  is  about  to  rediscover  God,  to  find 
him  close  at  hand  calling  to  its  deepest  nature, 
even  as  long  ago  in  the  garden  Mary  heard 
the  voice  that  called  her  by  her  name.  For 
the  God  of  today  is  not  some  huge  artificer  who 
built  the  world  from  without;  he  is  rather  the 
great  Soul  of  the  Universe  who  is  ever  creat- 
ing and  recreating  it  from  within.  You  do 
not  demonstrate  his  existence  by  appeals  to  a 

[22] 


God 

supernatural  book  coming  down  from  antiquity, 
though  that  book  may  be  part  of  the  evidence, 
nor  by  a  record  of  miracles  worked  long  ago 
on  the  shores  of  other  seas,  though  those 
miracles,  too,  may  be  very  interesting  bits  of 
evidence.  But  you  find  this  God  of  today  here 
in  the  world  around  you.  Your  primary 
evidence  is  not  centuries  old;  it  is  new  every 
hour.  The  greatest  miracles  have  never  been 
written;  they  are  here  in  the  blossoming  of 
the  rose  and  the  yet  more  marvellous  blossom- 
ing of  childhood  and  youth.  Miracles?  The 
world  is  full  of  them  and  every  common  bush 
is  aflame  with  God!  If  you  do  not  see  and 
stand  in  awe  at  the  miracles  going  on  all 
around  you,  what  you  think  about  the  miracles 
of  the  Bible  is  a  comparatively  insignificant 
detail. 

Let  us  look  out  into  the  universe  in  which 
we  live  and  see  what  we  find.  In  the  first  place, 
wherever  we  go  we  find  ourselves  in  the  pres- 
ence of  stupendous  energy  and  power.  Even 
so-called  dead  matter  proves  to  be  very  much 
alive,  permeated  by  mighty  forces  which  we 
call  gravitation.  If  I  let  loose  the  pencil  in 
my  hand  it  promptly  drops  to  the  floor, 
demonstrating  a  marvellous  invisible  con- 
nection between  it  and  the  total  mass  of  the 
earth. 

This  *  infinite  and  eternal  energy'^  in  the 
presence  of  which  we  live  is  fortunately  for  us 
no  lawless,  undependable  affair.  It  works  along 

[23] 


The  Drift  Toward  Religion 

certain  definite  lines  and  we  can  depend  upon 
its  habits.  It  seems  to  act  in  a  rational  way 
and  as  far  as  we  can  push  our  scientific  inves- 
tigations into  it  we  bring  back  formulas  and 
reports  of  rational  procedure.  Apparently 
this  universe  is  made  up  not  of  mere  happy-go- 
lucky,  aimless  energy,  but  of  energy  which 
operates  along  lines  laid  down  by  intelligence. 
How  large  the  supply  of  this  intelligence  is  we 
have  no  way  of  knowing,  but  it  seems  to  be 
sufficient  to  provide  endless  material  for  all  the 
scientific  investigators  of  the  world.  No  man 
can  look  out  at  the  vast  spectacle  of  ordered 
life  as  reported  in  astronomy  and  geology,  in 
chemistry,  botany  and  zoology,  in  the  habits 
of  the  bees  and  the  instincts  of  the  animals,  and 
not  pause  reverently  in  the  presence  not  of 
mere  wayward  power  and  occasional  gleams 
of  rationality,  but  in  the  presence  of  a  great, 
unifying  Intelligent  Energy.  That  Intelligent 
Energy  is  God!  As  a  matter  of  fact  we  all 
believe  in  God  thus  far  and  base  our  daily  lives 
upon  the  fact  of  such  a  wise,  dependable  and 
unifying  power  at  the  heart  of  the  universe. 

"There  is  no  unbelief: 
Whoever  plants  a  seed  beneath  the  sod 
And  waits  to  see  it  push  away  the  clod — 

He  trusts  in  God." 

But  we  have  not  exhausted  all  we  know 
about  the  universe  in  which  we  live.  The  story 
of  evolution  claims  our  attention  and  suggests 

[24] 


God 

a  great  purpose,  a  certain  dramatic  quality,  in 
the  creation.  This  marvellous  Intelligent  En- 
ergy seems  to  be  going  somewhere.    Only  think, 

"Out  of  this  nothingness  arose  our  thought  I 
This  blank  abysmal  nought 

Woke  and  brought  forth  that  lighted  city  street; 
Those  towers,  that  armored  fleet!" 

The  religious  implications  of  evolution  are 
tremendous.  Instead  of  making  God  unneces- 
sary it  simply  means  that  we  have  discovered 
him  at  work!  All  our  scientific  investigation, 
which  once  seemed  to  put  God  farther  and 
farther  away,  now  turns  out  to  have  been  really 
bringing  him  closer  to  us.  We  can  hear  the 
very  ringing  music  of  his  craftsmanship  and 
catch  hints  of  the  perfect  craft  and  tricks  of  the 
tools '  true  play. 

"We  seem  to  hear  a  heavenly  friend 
And   through   thick   veils    to    apprehend 
A  labor  working  to  an  end." 

But  our  knowledge  of  the  Intelligent  Energy, 
in  the  presence  of  which  we  are  ever  found  and 
from  which  there  is  no  escape,  is  not  limited 
by  what  science  has  to  tell  us  of  natural  law  or 
of  evolution.  Man,  too,  is  a  part  of  the  universe 
and  we  have  a  right  to  judge  this  Power  whose 
activities  are  all  about  us  by  its  highest  as  well 
as  its  lower  manifestations.  Wherever  we  find 
man  we  find  a  sense  of  right  and  wrong  and 
an  obligation  to  do  right.    Kant  said  that  there 

[25] 


The  Drift  Toward  Religion 

were  two  things  which  filled  his  soul  with  awe: 
the  spectacle  of  the  starry  heavens  above  and 
the  moral  law  within  the  heart  of  man.  Men 
may  not  agree  as  to  what  is  right  and  what 
is  wrong,  but  the  sense  of  moral  obligation  is 
universal.  With  the  capacity  for  morality 
there  develops  an  appreciation  of  beauty.  The 
earliest  specimens  of  human  craftsmanship 
which  we  possess  have  ornamentation  on  them, 
and  the  last  boatload  of  babies  from  the  land 
of  the  unborn  children  will  soon  be  gathering 
buttercups  and  daisies  with  joyous  apprecia- 
tion. With  morality  and  beauty  goes  love,  the 
third  great  human  quality.  It  may  have  come 
to  us  as  Drummond  and  John  Fiske  suggest — 
along  the  road  of  the  lengthening  period  of  in- 
fancy and  the  increasing  and  appealing  help- 
lessness of  human  childhood,  so  that  only  those 
races  survived  that  learned  to  protect  mothers 
and  love  and  care  for  children.  But,  however 
it  came,  love  is  here  as  one  of  the  great  radiant 
facts  of  human  life. 

Now  these  human  characteristics  are  not 
merely  human  characteristics.  We  have  the 
right  to  project  them  back  into  that  mighty 
Energy  which  thrills  through  the  universe  and 
of  which  man  is  the  noblest  and  highest  mani- 
festation. Is  God  personal?  Assuredly  he  can- 
not be  less  than  personal,  for  he  cannot  be  less 
than  that  which  reveals  his  presence  and  mani- 
fests his  character.  An  Intelligent  Power, 
characterized  by  a  progressive  purpose  and  a 

[26] 


God 

sense  of  morality,  beauty  and  love  comes  pretty 
near  to  being  a  definition  of  personality ! 

But  we  must  be  careful  not  to  limit  God's 
personality  by  our  own.  We  cannot  measure 
the  ocean  in  a  tin  dipper!  God's  personality 
must  be  all  that  ours  is — and  then  vastly  more. 
As  Herbert  Spencer  once  said,  **It  is  not  a 
question  between  a  personal  God  and  something 
less,  but  between  a  personal  God  and  something 
more!"  Properly  interpreted,  that  is  pro- 
foundly true. 

After  all,  it  is  not  difficult  to  see  that  God's 
personality  must  include  all  that  personality 
means  to  us  and  then  more,  for  we  see  grada- 
tions of  personality  every  day  in  the  world 
around  us.  Here  is  a  tree:  we  played  under 
it  in  childhood;  we  loved  it  with  an  instinctive 
revival  of  primitive  nature  worship;  we  can 
close  our  eyes  today  and  see  the  red  berries 
and  smell  the  fragrance  of  that  old  tree — it 
has  an  individuality  all  its  own.  But  here  is 
a  dog.  In  him  personality  has  reached  a  higher 
level — we  have  much  more  in  common  with  him 
than  with  the  tree.  Not  long  ago  a  friend  and 
I  climbed  Mount  St.  Helena.  The  friendly  col- 
lie at  the  toll  house  accompanied  us  with  eager 
enthusiasm.  The  freshness  of  the  morning 
and  the  joy  of  muscular  exertion  were  com- 
mon sources  of  delight  to  him  and  to  us.  At 
the  summit  we  drank  some  water  from  the  can- 
teen. That  action  appealed  to  him,  too,  as  he 
lolled  out  his  long  red  tongue,  panting  fever- 

[27] 


The  Drift  Toward  Religion 

ishly  and  appealing  to  us  with  his  big  brown 
eyes.  I  laid  my  hat  on  the  rocks,  made  a  dent 
in  the  top  of  it  to  hold  some  water  and  he 
drank  with  hearty  appreciation.  So  far  our  per- 
sonalities had  traveled  similar  roads.  But  now 
we  read  the  tablet  on  the  mountain  top  telling 
how  it  had  first  been  climbed  by  a  Russian 
party  from  Fort  Ross  in  1841.  The  dog  was  not 
interested.  We  spread  a  map  on  the  ground, 
and  he  did  not  even  pause  to  wonder  what  the 
little  black  lines  meant.  We  pointed  to  the 
great  white  cone  of  Shasta,  clearly  visible 
nearly  two  hundred  miles  away,  but  Shasta 
meant  nothing  to  him.  Our  human  personali- 
ties had  passed  out  into  regions  where  his  dog 
life  could  never  go. 

Even  so  I  believe  God  is  personal,  not  merely 
in  the  limited  way  in  which  we  are,  but  in 
depths  of  being  and  richness  of  apprehension 
of  reality  which  are  simply  beyond  the  depths 
of  our  human  understanding.  May  not  the 
great  value  of  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity  be 
just  here — that  it  emphasizes  the  richness  and 
depth  and  superhuman  quality  of  the  person- 
ality of  God? 

I  like  to  think  of  our  relationship  to  God  as 
being  not  like  the  relation  of  a  completed  statue 
to  the  sculptor  who  has  made  it,  but  more  in- 
timate, like  the  relation  of  the  leaves  to  the 
tree.  No  leaf  thinks  for  a  moment  that  it  is 
the  tree,  but  each  leaf  gathers  sunshine  for  the 
tree  and  receives  from  all  the  rest  of  the  tree 

[28] 


God 

the  vital  forces  which  give  it  life.  Or,  better 
still,  I  like  to  think  of  our  lives  as  being  related 
to  God  somewhat  as  the  great  bay  out  yonder 
is  related  to  the  ocean  beyond.  The  bay  is  not 
the  ocean.  It  knows  its  shallows  and  its  limi- 
tations. The  bay  is  forever  distinct.  There 
is  no  possible  confusion  between  San  Francisco 
Bay,  for  example,  and  Puget  Sound  or  San 
Diego  Bay.  Yet  bay  and  ocean  are  vitally  con- 
nected: the  same  water  fills  them  both  and 
twice  in  every  twenty-four  hours  the  bay  sends 
its  ebb  tides  far  out  to  sea  and  again  twice  in 
every  twenty-four  hours  the  great  flood  tides 
from  the  ocean  crowd  in  and  fill  the  bay  to 
every  nook  and  cranny,  lifting  it  to  higher 
levels. 

How  such  a  conception  of  our  relationship 
to  God  transforms  our  conception  of  prayer! 
Prayer  becomes  no  mere  formula  of  words  cast 
into  the  air  to  find  wings  and  arise  to  heaven. 
If  you  have  grace  to  receive  it,  God  does  not 
hear  prayer — he  feels  it  I  The  yearnings  of  our 
souls  reach  directly  into  the  life  of  God.  The 
connection  between  our  lives  and  his  is  as  real 
and  immediate  as  that  between  two  wireless  sta- 
tions tuned  to  receive  each  other's  messages. 
The  directions  in  which  we  protect  our  lives, 
the  ways  we  put  forth  our  energies,  the  work 
we  do,  the  ends  we  seek  with  a  whole  souPs 
tasking— these  are  our  real  prayers.  If  they 
agree  with  our  spoken  prayers,  well  and  good. 
But  if  they  disagree  with  the  prayers  we  utter 

[29] 


The  Drift  Toward  Religion 

with  our  lips  in  church  on  Sunday  morning — 
why,  then  we  must  only  grieve  the  heart  of  God. 
But  I  must  guard  this.  Some  one  will  say: 
**Then  you  don^t  believe  in  verbal  prayer!'* 
Indeed  I  do !  What  makes  a  patriot !  Singing 
**  America '*  or  contributing  a  clean,  honest 
life  and  sharing  in  all  civic  work?  And  yet 
we  believe  true  citizens  will  want  to  sing 
* '  America. ' '  What  makes  a  good  mother  ?  The 
kissing  and  fondling  of  her  baby  or  ceaseless, 
watchful  care  for  its  physical  growth  and  moral 
development?  And  yet  we  believe  no  mother 
can  help  caressing  her  child.  Here  is  an  artist. 
Essentially  he  is  made  an  artist  by  his  per- 
ception of  beauty.  But  because  he  is  an  artist 
he  will  try  to  interpret  into  color  or  poetry  or 
music  the  sunset  that  thrills  him  with  its 
beauty.  So  prayer  in  its  deepest  meaning  is 
invisible  and  inaudible — a  motion  of  the  spirit — 
but  prayer  also  demands  expression  in  your 
own  words,  in  the  classic  English  of  *  ^  The  Book 
of  Common  Prayer,  *'  in  the  beautiful  **Vaili- 
ma  Prayers '*  of  Robert  Louis  Stevenson  or 
in  those  virile,  warm-hearted,  contemporary 
*  *  Prayers  of  the  Social  Awakening, ' '  by  Walter 
Rauschenbusch. 


[30] 


CHAPTER  in 
THE   BIBLE 


CHAPTER  III 
THE  BIBLE 

WE  live  in  a  world  of  things  made  new. 
We  have  a  new  medicine,  transformed 
by  the  discovery  of  anesthetics  and  antiseptic 
surgery,  of  antitoxin  for  diphtheria  and  of 
the  elimination  of  the  mosquito-spread 
malaria  and  yellow  fever.  We  live  in  a 
world  of  new  building  construction,  rein- 
forced concrete  and  steel  frames  replacing 
the  old  stone  walls.  Our  day  is  the  day  of  a 
new  biology  with  its  emphasis  upon  evolution 
as  the  master  key  to  all  sorts  of  problems;  of 
the  new  psychology  with  its  discovery  of  the 
powers  of  suggestion  and  mental  health ;  and — 
let  us  hope — of  a  new  penology,  replacing  with 
its  reform  and  moral  regeneration  the  crude 
vengeance  meted  out  to  criminals  for  hundreds 
of  generations. 

The  great  spirit  of  scientific  investigation 
and  mental  alertness  to  which  we  owe  this  re- 
interpretation  of  so  many  departments  of  life 
has  not  neglected  the  Bible.  More  lives  of 
Christ  have  been  written  in  the  last  forty  years 
than  in  all  the  Christian  centuries  before.  Such 
books  as  Hastings'  ** Bible  Dictionary,''  the 
**Encyclop£edia  Biblica,"  *'The  Dictionary  of 

[33] 


The  Drift  Toward  Religion 

Christ  and  the  Gospels/'  the  Schaff-Herzog 
** Encyclopaedia,  of  Religious  Knowledge,*' 
**The  International  Critical  Commentary''  and 
**The  Expositor's  Bible" — both  in  many 
volumes — and  works  like  Schurer's  **  Jewish 
People  in  the  Time  of  Christ,"  Kent's  *^ Stu- 
dents' Old  Testament,"  the  volumes  of  **The 
International  Theological  Library,"  Moffat's 
**New  Testament,"  together  with  innumerable 
single  volumes,  bear  witness  to  the  vast  amount 
of  scholarly  study  of  the  Bible  in  Germany, 
Great  Britain  and  the  United  States. 

The  result  is  that  we  have  a  new  and  better 
Bible.  Many  ideas  that  prejudiced  men  against 
the  Bible,  that  clouded  its  interpretation  and 
dishonored  the  God  revealed  to  us  by  Jesus 
have  passed  away  forever. 

What  is  the  Bible?  Well— first  of  all— what- 
ever else  it  may  be,  it  is  a  great  literature — the 
sifted  and  chosen  literature  of  the  Hebrew  peo- 
ple. It  represents  those  books  which  had  suffi- 
cient vitality  to  live  down  through  the  centuries. 
In  some  way  they  so  ministered  to  the  needs 
of  humanity  that  men  would  not  let  them  die. 

The  Bible  is  not  a  book.  It  comes  nearer 
to  being  a  library.  If  you  were  to  take  Green's 
** History  of  England,"  ** Pilgrim's  Progress," 
the  ** Idylls  of  the  King,"  a  hymn-book,  the 
Constitution  and  the  common  law,  Phillips 
Brooks'  sermons,  **Poor  Richard's  Almanac," 
the  letters  of  Robert  Louis  Stevenson,  *  *  Richard 
Carvel,"  the  life  of  Abraham  Lincoln,  Bacon's 

[34] 


The  Bible 

** Essays,'*  ** Paradise  Lost'*  and  Shakespeare's 
plays  and  bind  them  all  in  one  volume,  you 
would  have  in  English  literature  something  that 
would  be  comparable  in  scope  and  variety  to 
the  Bible.  Only  you  would  have  to  print  these 
books  solidly — without  sentence,  paragraph  or 
chapter  divisions.  You  would  have  to  print 
the  poetry  as  prose  and  the  plays  without  any 
indications  of  scenes  or  speakers.  Then  have 
this  solid  mass  chopped  up  into  chapters  and 
verses — not  very  intelligently  but  often  cutting 
right  across  the  middle  of  a  poem  or  interrupt- 
ing the  development  of  an  idea.  Then  bind  the 
book  in  limp  black  leather,  put  it  on  the  center 
table  where  it  can  be  easily  dusted  and  educate 
people  to  believe  that  it  is  all  Bible,  all  prose, 
all  to  be  taken  literally,  all  of  equal  authority 
as  the  infallible  word  of  God — the  drollery  of 
one  of  Shakespeare's  fools  to  be  taken  just  as 
seriously  as  Lincoln's  Gettysburg  Address — 
and  you  have  for  English  literature  something 
equivalent  in  form,  matter  and  meaning  to  what 
our  Bibles  are  in  relation  to  the  literature  of 
the  Hebrews. 

As  a  matter  of  fact  we  have  in  the  Bible 
many  different  literary  forms.  The  Books  of 
Samuel  and  Kings  and  the  Book  of  Acts  rep- 
resent history;  the  early  chapters  of  Genesis 
represent  early  traditions  not  dissimilar  in 
quality  to  the  stories  of  King  Arthur;  bits  of 
allegory  are  scattered  through  the  Old  and  New 
Testament;  the  Book  of  Psalms  is  the  hymn- 

[35] 


The  Drift  Toward  Religion 

book  of  the  Second  Temple;  Deuteronomy  and 
Leviticus  represent  the  common  law;  Amos, 
Isaiah  and  the  other  prophets  present  one  of 
the  world's  greatest  collections  of  sermons  and 
orations;  the  Book  of  Proverbs  represents  the 
practical  wisdom  of  the  Hebrew  race;  Ec- 
clesiastes  sometimes  parallels  the  Rubaiyat  in 
pessimism ;  Esther  and  Daniel  probably  partake 
of  the  character  of  historical  romances  not  dis- 
similar to  **  Richard  CarveP';  we  have  a  col- 
lection of  letters  in  the  Epistles  of  St.  Paul,  and 
an  approach  to  dramatic  literature  in  the  Book 
of  Job,  while  the  four  most  precious  biographies 
in  the  world  are  the  Gospels. 

Why  do  I  emphasize  the  fact  that  the  Bible 
is  literature?  First:  Because  an  appreciation 
of  this  fact  helps  us  really  to  understand  the 
different  books.  We  read  poetry  in  one  mood, 
history  in  another,  drama  in  yet  another,  and 
the  common  law  in  quite  another.  When  you 
approach  the  Bible  it  is  worth  while  to  ask 
yourself:  **What  form  of  literature  am  I  read- 
ing?" When,  for  example,  you  read  in  your 
English  history  that  on  a  certain  day  in  1066 
William  the  Conqueror  landed  on  the  English 
coast  you  take  the  matter  seriously  and  as  a 
statement  of  prosaic  fact,  but  what  would  you 
think  of  a  man  who,  reading  **Gareth  and 
Lynette,''  came  to  these  lines: 

"Seeing  the  city  is  built 
To  music,  therefore  never  built  at  all, 
And  therefore  built  forever^' 

[36] 


The  Bible 

and  said:  ** That's  stuff  and  nonsense!  Cities 
aren't  built  to  music.  They  are  built  to  blue- 
prints, bond  issues  and  the  demands  of  com- 
merce. ' '  You  would  simply  say  to  him :  *  *  Why, 
you  don't  understand  what  you  are  reading. 
This  is  poetry  and  the  city  is  a  symbol  of  the 
ideal."  Yet,  we  have  in  the  past  constantly 
done  violence  to  our  Bibles  by  failing  to  recog- 
nize the  different  types  of  literature  they 
contain. 

A  prosaic  race,  quite  failing  to  understand 
the  poetic  Oriental  temperament,  has  exhausted 
its  wits  to  explain  how  Joshua  could  have 
stopped  the  earth  from  revolving  on  its  axis, 
utterly  missing  the  poetry  in  which  the  incident 
is  narrated.  And  yet,  are  we  entirely  lacking 
in  poetry?  Do  we  not  sing  in  our  national 
anthem : 

"Let  mortal  tongues  awake, 
Let  all  that  breathe  partake, 
Let  rocks  their  silence  break, 
The  sound  prolong"? 

Should  we  not  be  slightly  amazed  to  wake  up 
two  thousand  years  from  now  to  find  people 
solemnly  claiming  that  rocks  in  our  day  were 
possessed  of  human  speech  when  in  the  lines 
in  question  we  were  only  trying  to  make  a 
poetical  reference  to  the  echo? 

**This  is  the  tragedy  of  the  Book  of  Jonah,'' 
says  George  Adam  Smith,  *'that  a  book  which 
is  made  the  means  of  one  of  the  most  sublime 
revelations    of   truth   in   the    Old    Testament 

[37] 


The  Drift  Toward  Religion 

should  be  known  to  most  only  for  its  connec- 
tion with  the  whale. '^  Why!  Because  to  most 
people  it  has  never  been  revealed  that  the  Book 
of  Jonah  is  an  allegory,  that  the  important 
thing  is  not  the  story  it  tells,  but  the  message 
it  carries.  If  this  were  once  clearly  understood, 
the  whale  would  cease  to  worry  us,  and  we 
should  give  our  attention  to  the  great  message 
of  human  brotherhood  and  to  the  brooding, 
tender  love  of  God  for  the  great  heathen  city 
of  Nineveh  with  its  120,000  little  children  too 
small  to  know  their  right  hand  from  their  left 
*  *  and  also  much  cattle. ' ' 

You  have  an  entirely  parallel  situation  in 
** Pilgrim's  Progress.''  I  remember  noticing 
when  a  boy  that  in  the  pictures  of  Christian 
he  had  no  armor  on  his  back  and  I  criticized 
his  inadequate  equipment  to  my  father,  who 
was  reading  the  story  to  me.  It  was  explained 
that  this  was  symbolical  of  the  fact  that  a  Chris- 
tian is  safe  only  when  facing  his  foes  and  not 
when  running  away  from  them.  But  what 
would  you  think  of  a  man  who  would  say:  **I 
don't  believe  in  that  book  they  call  *  Pilgrim's 
Progress'?  I  went  to  Europe  last  summer  and 
saw  hundreds  of  suits  of  armor.  Every  one  of 
them  went  all  the  way  around.  I  don't  believe 
any  man  ever  went  out  to  fight  in  a  suit  of 
armor  that  didn't  protect  his  back."  You 
would  simply  laugh  at  him  and  say  he  had 
missed  the  point  of  the  allegory.  But  if  a  man 
suggests  that  he  has  doubts  as  to  whether  or 

[38] 


The  Bible 

not  Jonah  was  really  swallowed  by  a  great  fish, 
you  hold  a  heresy  trial  to  determine  whether  or 
not  he  is  a  Christian. 

It  is  worth  while  also  to  emphasize  the  liter- 
ary character  of  the  Bible  because  it  brings 
into  the  Bible  so  much  of  variety  and  therefore 
of  interest.  If  you  have  sixty-six  different 
friends,  you  value  them  because  of  their  dis- 
tinct individualities.  You  admire  this  man 
for  courage,  and  that  one  for  his  dogged 
determination.  You  honor  this  woman  for 
her  fine  serenity  of  spirit  and  that  one  for  her 
capacity  to  forgive  injury.  This  friend  min- 
isters to  your  life  by  his  love  of  poetry  and 
this  other  one  by  his  irrepressible  sense  of 
humor.  How  terrible  it  would  be  to  have  sixty- 
six  friends  all  alike — have  them  answer  your 
questions  in  the  same  words  and  greet  your 
story  with  the  same  identical  smile  I  When 
we  understand  the  literary  nature  of  the 
Bible  its  sixty-six  different  books  become  so 
many  different  friends  ministering  to  us,  each 
with  its  own  message  and  fitted  to  meet  differ- 
ent moods  and  times. 

To  illustrate  this  let  me  outline  to  you  some- 
thing of  the  personality  of  the  four  Gospels. 
The  first  one  to  be  written  was  Mark.  Mark  was 
Peter's  secretary  at  Eome.  After  Peter  had 
given  his  life  in  martyrdom  at  the  Circus 
Maximus  the  litle  group  of  Christian  believers, 
fearful  lest  what  he  had  said  of  the  Lord  should 
be  lost,  persuaded  Mark  to  write  down  what 

[39] 


The  Drift  Toward  Religion 

he  remembered  of  Peter's  teachings  about 
Jesus'  life.  The  result  is  the  kind  of  book  one 
would  expect  to  come  out  of  such  circumstances. 
Behind  it  is  Peter — impulsive,  alert,  a  man  of 
action.  It  is  addressed  to  the  Roman  people, 
the  road-builders,  the  law-makers  of  antiquity, 
people  who  demanded  results,  who  were  in- 
terested in  action.  Mark's  Gospel,  therefore, 
contains  very  little  discourse  material,  but  it 
tells  a  great  deal  about  what  Jesus  actually 
did.  In  its  descriptions  of  his  activities  it  is 
the  most  circumstantial  and  vivid  of  the  four. 
It  is  Peter's  Gospel,  written  for  the  Romans 
and  portraying  Jesus  as  the  Master  of  Men, 
the  Doer  of  Mighty  Deeds. 

The  second  Gospel  to  be  written  was  Mat- 
thew. Our  present  Matthew  is  a  combination 
of  almost  all  of  the  narrative  material  of  Mark 
together  with  a  mass  of  discourse  material 
which  probably  originally  circulated  indepen- 
dently and  was  known  as  the  logia  of  Matthew. 
This  Gospel  was  written  in  Palestine  by  a  Jew 
and  for  the  Jews.  Its  great  theme  is  the  King- 
dom of  Heaven.  It  gives  The  Sermon  on  the 
Mount  as  the  inaugural  address  of  that  Kingdom. 
It  is  constantly  appealing  to  the  Jewish  scrip- 
tures :  * '  Thus  it  is  written  through  the  prophet ' ' 
is  a  constantly  recurring  formula.  Its  great 
purpose  is  to  set  forth  to  Jewish  readers  Jesus 
as  a  fulfillment  of  prophecy  and  as  the  Mes- 
sianic King. 

Luke's  Gospel,  while  containing  much  mate- 
[40] 


The  Bible 

rial  in  common  with  Mark  and  Matthew,  has 
an  independent  character  of  its  own.  It  is  writ- 
ten in  the  best  Greek  of  the  four.  It  abounds 
in  medical  terms.  Its  author  was  probably  a 
Greek  physician,  a  companion  of  St.  Paul.  Its 
dominant  quality  is  its  humanitarianism.  It 
dwells  with  especial  tenderness  on  Jesus*  kind- 
ness to  children  and  women  and  all  other  neg- 
lected and  outcast  classes  of  the  day.  It  is  a 
social  gospel,  and  its  denunciations  of  wealth 
are  by  no  means  mild.  It  alone  of  the  four 
Gospels  has  preserved  to  us  the  parable  of  the 
Prodigal  Son,  the  parable  of  the  Good  Samari- 
tan and  the  story  of  Zacchaeus.  It  portrays 
not  Jesus  the  Doer  of  Mighty  Deeds  nor 
Jesus  the  Messianic  King,  but  it  reveals 
with  surpassing  tenderness  Jesus  the  Great 
Physician. 

These  three  Gospels  are  photographic  in 
their  character.  They  represent  Jesus  as 
caught  upon  the  sensitive  plate  of  three  differ- 
ent types  of  mind.  In  the  fourth  Gospel  we 
have  something  more  nearly  akin  to  a  painted 
portrait,  possibly  less  accurate  in  some  details 
and  yet  for  that  very  reason  having  a  pro- 
founder  insight  into  the  deeper  truths  of  char- 
acter. I  have  read  somewhere  of  a  portrait 
artist  before  whom  some  men  found  it  unwise 
to  sit  because  unconsciously  the  artist  painted 
not  only  the  external  apearance  but  also  the 
inner  soul  of  his  subject.  John's  Gospel  is  such 
a  great  artistic  interpretation  of  the  soul  of 

[41] 


The  Drift   Toward  Religion 

Jesus.  It  was  probably  written  in  Ephesus  by 
a  group  of  disciples  of  John  who  looked  to 
him  as  their  authority  and  therefore  bears  a 
relation  to  John  similar  to  that  which  the  Gos- 
pel of  Mark  bears  to  Peter.  It  is  an  attempt  to 
interpret  the  fact  of  Christ  into  the  terms  of  the 
prevalent  mystical  philosophy  of  the  day.  It 
sets  forth  Jesus  the  Son  of  God.  It  is  the  pro- 
foundly religious  Gospel  which  appeals  to  us 
at  our  moments  of  highest  exaltation  and  deep- 
est need.  **Let  not  your  heart  be  troubled; 
ye  believe  in  God,  believe  also  in  me. ' '  *  *  In  the 
world  ye  shall  have  tribulation.  Be  of  good 
cheer,  I  have  overcome  the  world.'*  **And  the 
word  became  flesh  and  dwelt  among  us  full 
of  grace  and  truth  and  we  all  beheld  his 
glory,  glory  as  of  the  only  begotten  from  the 
Father.  *' 

I  have  said  that  the  Bible  is  a  great  litera- 
ture, but  I  cannot  stop  here.  The  Bible  is  not 
only  a  great  literature — it  is  the  great  litera- 
ture of  the  spirit.  It  lives  and  endures  not  for 
its  sheer  literary  power,  though  that  is  often 
exquisite,  but  because  of  its  spiritual  mes- 
sage. God  seems  to  have  given  to  the  Greeks 
a  genius  for  perception  of  artistic  form,  to  the 
Romans  a  genius  for  organization,  to  the  Anglo- 
Saxons  for  self-government,  to  the  modern  Ger- 
mans for  the  application  of  science  to  problems 
of  community  life,  and  to  the  ancient  Hebrews  a 
genius  for  religion.  Here  in  the  Bible  are  the 
greatest  answers  the  world  has  ever  heard  to 

[42] 


The  Bible 

those  irrepressible  questions  of  every  age  con- 
cerning justice  and  duty,  sin  and  punishment, 
life  and  death. 

Because  of  this  fact  the  world  has  always 
honored  the  Bible  as  inspired,  and  the  more 
carefully  we  study  it  the  more  marvellous  that 
inspiration  becomes  to  us  and  the  more  capable 
of  inspiring  us  in  turn.  But  in  recognizing  the 
inspiration  of  the  Bible  we  must  beware  that 
we  do  not  convey  by  that  term  the  impression 
of  infallibility  or  of  a  uniform  degree  of  inspira- 
tion. The  Bible  is  not  a  dead  level.  The  day  is 
past  when  we  can  appeal  to  it  with  supersti- 
tious confidence  in  its  infallibility  to  settle  all 
kinds  of  questions  like  the  old  lady  who  was 
distressed  by  the  problem  of  whether  to  dye  her 
old  dress  as  spring  approached  or  simply  to 
turn  it.  She  opened  her  Bible  at  random  and 
this  verse  from  Isaiah  settled  the  question  for 
her :  *  ^  Turn  ye,  turn  ye,  for  why  will  ye  die  ? '  M 

The  Bible  is,  rather,  the  record  of  a  growing 
revelation,  of  a  deepening  insight  into  religious 
truths.  There  are  passages  in  it  which  are 
only  of  value  to  remind  us  of  the  pit  whence 
we  were  digged  and  the  rock  whence  we  were 
hewn.  Read  over  again,  for  example,  the  story 
of  Jepthah's  daughter  in  Judges.  In  the  heat 
of  battle  Jepthah  vows  for  the  sake  of  victory 
to  sacrifice  to  Jehovah  the  first  thing  which 
comes  to  greet  him  on  his  return  home.  His 
daughter  proves  to  be  the  unwitting  victim.  She 
retires  into  the  mountains  for  a  season  to  pre- 

[43] 


The  Drift  Toward  Religion 

pare  for  death  and  then  returns.  And  the  Book 
of  Judges  says,  without  pity,  without  any  ex- 
pression of  moral  indignation,  and  yet  with 
commendable  reserve,  **And  he  did  unto  her  ac- 
cording to  his  vow.'*  Look  at  it  squarely  in 
the  face!  What  is  it?  Human  sacrifice  unre- 
proved  on  the  pages  of  the  Bible !  That  shows 
the  depths  out  of  which  the  religion  of  the  Bible 
came.  If  you  want  to  see  the  heights  turn  to 
the  Prophet  Micah  and  read  these  great  verses 
in  the  sixth  chapter : 

**  Wherewith  shall  I  come  before  Jehovah, 
and  bow  myself  before  the  high  God!  Shall 
I  come  before  him  with  burnt-offerings,  with 
calves  a  year  old!  Will  Jehovah  be  pleased 
with  thousands  of  rams,  or  with  ten  thousands 
of  rivers  of  oil?  Shall  I  give  my  first-born  for 
my  transgression,  the  fruit  of  my  body  for  the 
sin  of  my  soul?  He  hath  showed  thee,  0  man, 
what  is  good;  and  what  doth  Jehovah  require 
of  thee,  but  to  do  justly,  and  to  love  kindness, 
and  to  walk  humbly  with  thy  God  ?  * ' 

But  some  one  says:  ^*If  the  Bible  is  not  in- 
fallible, if  it  is  not  all  equally  inspired,  how 
can  I  tell  what  is  authoritative  and  what  is 
not?*'  Fortunately  the  Bible  carries  within  it- 
self its  own  standard  and  touchstone.  You  can 
take  the  teachings  of  Jesus,  they  form  a  rule — 
a  golden  rule — by  which  you  can  measure  the 
moral  elevation  of  all  the  rest  of  the  Bible.  You 
can  do  this  frankly  and  freely  because  Jesus 
himself  did  it.    He  had  no  false  notions  as  to 

[44] 


The  Bible 

the  infallibility  or  permanent  validity  of  the 
Old  Testament.  He  did  not  hesitate  to  call  at- 
tention to  things  which  were  written  there  only 
because  of  the  hardness  of  men's  hearts: 

**Ye  have  heard  that  it  was  said  to  them  of 
old  times  *Thou  shalt  not  kill/  but  I  say  unto 
you  that  every  one  who  is  angry  with  his 
brother  shall  be  in  danger  of  the  judgment.  Ye 
have  heard  that  it  was  said  *Thou  shalt  love 
thy  neighbor  and  hate  thy  enemy,'  but  I  say 
love  thine  enemies  and  pray  for  them  that  per- 
secute you." 

There  is  one  last  word  which  I  wish  to  say 
about  the  Bible — possibly  the  most  important 
word  of  all.  When  I  was  a  boy  I  was  taught 
to  think  of  the  history  of  the  world  as  divided 
into  two  dispensations — one  back  in  Bible 
times,  when  God  was  in  the  world  working 
miracles,  speaking  to  men  in  dreams  and  vi- 
sions, personally  guiding  and  inspiring  them, 
and  the  other  the  time  in  which  we  lived,  when 
God  seemed  to  have  gone  away  and  left  the 
world  to  run  itself.  He  was  no  longer  expected 
to  work  miracles,  and  if  we  wished  to  come  into 
communication  with  him  we  must  read  the 
letter  which  he  had  written  to  us  and  left  be- 
hind in  the  Bible.  God's  messages  no  longer 
came  to  us  in  living,  vital  touch  upon  our  souls. 
To  know  his  will  we  had  to  travel  back  across 
the  centuries  and  rely  on  the  experiences  which 
other  men  had  had.  I  no  longer  feel  that  way 
about  it.     I  believe  there  is  only  one  dispen- 

[45] 


The  Drift  Toward  Religion 

sation — that  God  is  just  as  much  in  the  world 
as  he  ever  was;  that  there  are  just  as  many 
miracles,  just  as  many  angels,  just  as  many  vi- 
sions as  there  ever  were;  that  his  presence 
broods  across  the  hills  beside  this  western  sea 
just  as  truly  as  it  did  at  Bethel ;  and  that  great 
figures  of  our  own  age  like  Tennyson  and 
Browning,  like  Tolstoy  and  Lincoln,  like  Jane 
Addams  and  Helen  Keller  are  also  among  the 
prophets ! 

The  great  thing  which  the  Bible  can  do  for 
our  religious  life  is  not  to  present  to  us  an 
artificially  preserved  message  from  God  to 
which  we  can  go  to  learn  his  will.  It  is  rather 
so  to  present  to  us  the  spectacle  of  other  men 
in  other  days  hearing  his  voice  and  finding  help 
in  his  presence  that  we  shall  be  inspired  to 
follow  their  example  and  open  our  lives  to  the 
indwelling  of  his  spirit.  We  also  are  to  be 
responsive  to  his  still,  small  voice  and  go  out 
into  our  world  to  find  every  common  bush 
aflame  with  God.  The  supreme  value  of  the 
Bible  is  not  merely  to  find  God  there,  but  to 
'gain  inspiration  to  find  him  here.  Each  age 
must  renew  for  itself  something  akin  to  the 
experience  recorded  in  the  Bible. 


[46] 


CHAPTER  ly 
JESUS 


I 


CHAPTER  rV 
JESUS 

REMEMBER  reading  as  a  boy  a  little  book 
which  told  of  a  preacher  who  noticed  in 
his  congregation  one  Sunday  a  man  of  peculiar 
winsomeness  and  responsiveness,  so  that  he  felt 
himself  inspired  by  his  presence  to  change  his 
sermon  here  and  there — making  it  more  simple, 
more  deeply  spiritual.  After  the  congregation 
had  gone  out  he  found  himself  alone  with  the 
man  and  lo !  the  man  was  Jesus !  I  would  speak 
and  I  would  have  you  listen  as  though  Jesus 
himself  sat  here  listening.  I  would  not  enter 
into  any  controversy  about  Jesus.  I  only  desire, 
as  effectively  as  I  may,  to  bear  witness  as  to 
what  I  find  in  him. 

What  I  have  to  say  is  intensely  personal.  I 
am  a  Congregationalist,  but  this  is  no  authori- 
tative pronouncement  of  Congregational  views, 
for  in  the  nature  of  the  case  each  Congrega- 
tional minister  is  independent  and  can  speak 
only  for  himself.  I  am  a  graduate  of  the  Uni- 
versity of  California  and  of  Yale  Divinity 
School,  but  what  I  say  is  no  mere  parrot-like 
repetition  of  the  teaching  of  any  school.  It  is 
rather  an  attempt  to  set  forth  a  personal  an- 
swer to  this  question:  **What  may  Jesus  mean 
to  a  man  who  was  reared  in  a  Christian  home, 

[49] 


The  Drift  Toward  Religion 

who  has  spent  seven  years  in  study  at  two 
typical  modern  universities  and  who  has  lived 
eagerly  and  sympathetically  in  the  full  current 
of  modern  civic  life  for  ten  years  more  ? ' ' 

To  begin  with,  I  think  it  is  beyond  question 
that  the  distinguishing  characteristic  of  the 
modern  point  of  view  in  everything  is  the  use 
of  the  inductive  method.  That  man  is  a 
medievalist  who  starts  with  a  dogma  and  mar- 
shall  s  arguments  in  its  support.  The  dogma 
may  be  true,  the  arguments  may  be  valid,  but 
the  method  is  medieval.  That  man  is  a  modern- 
ist who  starts  with  the  facts,  sits  down  humbly 
before  them  and  seeks  to  understand  them,  and 
is  willing  to  follow  where  the  facts  lead,  regard- 
less of  all  dogmas,  prejudices  or  preconceived 
ideas.  For  men  trained  in  the  scientific  atmos- 
phere of  modern  life  the  most  helpful  approach 
to  Christ  will  be  the  approach  not  by  way  of 
dogma,  but  along  the  line  of  the  inductive 
method.  And  surely  he  who  said  to  his  disci- 
ples **Come  and  ye  shall  see*'  will  welcome  our 
approach  to  him  in  this  spirit  of  scientific 
humility. 

As  I  have  reconstructed  for  myself  during  the 
last  seventeen  years  the  meaning  of  Christ  I 
therefore  begin  here :  Whatever  else  Jesus  was 
or  was  not  he  was  certainly  a  man.  The  record 
of  the  Gospels  as  I  read  them  reveals  to  me  a 
genuine  human  being.  He  lived  and  felt  as  a 
man.  He  **  increased  in  wisdom  and  stature 
and  in  favor  with  God  and  man.'*    He  faced 

[50] 


Jesus 

temptation.  He  often  sat  wearied  by  the  well- 
curb  of  life.  He  knew  defeat  and  failure.  He 
longed  for  human  companionship  and  he  also 
sought  for  divine  companionship  in  prayer.  He 
wept  at  the  tomb  of  Lazarus.  He  cried  out  on 
the  cross  in  anguish  of  body  and  of  spirit. 

To  realize  the  genuine  humanity  of  Jesus  is 
a  great  gain.  As  a  boy  in  Sunday  school  I  did 
not  get  this  conception  of  him.  The  Christ 
presented  to  me  then  was  not  a  man.  He  was 
only  masquerading  as  a  man.  In  reality  he  was 
a  supernatural  being  with  unlimited  knowledge 
and  power  who  was  rather  thinly  disguised  in 
garments  of  humanity.  He  was  really  a  being 
apart  from  me  or  my  possible  experience.  Now 
all  this  is  changed  and  Jesus  has  for  me  a 
greater  reality  and  a  higher  personal  value  be- 
cause I  believe  firmly  in  the  genuineness  of  his 
humanity.  It  puts  new  power  into  texts  like 
**And  the  word  became  flesh  and  dwelt  among 
us  full  of  grace  and  truth  ^'  and  **  being  found 
in  fashion  as  a  man  he  humbled  himself,  becom- 
ing obedient  even  unto  death''  and  **As  the 
Father  hath  sent  me  into  the  world,  even  so 
send  I  you. ' ' 

But  Jesus  was  no  ordinary  man.  There  are 
certain  facts  about  him  which  have,  it  seems  to 
me,  tremendous  significance.  First  of  all  is 
this:  Not  only  was  he  recognized  as  a  great 
teacher  in  his  own  day  but  since  his  day  it  has 
developed  that  he  is  indeed  the  supreme  teacher 
of  humanity  in  matters  of  conduct  and  religion. 

[51] 


The  Drift  Toward  Religion 

His  ethical  standards  have  conquered  the  world 
— not  yet  in  actual  attainment,  sad  to  say — ^but 
as  unchallenged  expressions  of  the  ideal.  Men 
who  profess  no  religious  faith,  men  bitterly  op- 
posed to  organized  religion,  yet  find  in  him  the 
world  *s  supreme  teacher  of  ethics. 

But  you  cannot  detach  the  teacher  from  the 
man  himself.  Jesus  gave  to  the  world  not  only 
its  supreme  teaching,  but  its  supreme  example 
of  the  incorporation  of  the  teaching  into  daily 
life.  He  lived  his  message.  So  far  as  we  can 
see  he  bears  no  shadow  upon  his  character. 
There  is  no  stain  upon  his  garments.  Nor  is 
this  purity  external  only.  It  seems  to  be  an 
inner  fact,  for  nowhere  does  he  betray  con- 
sciousness of  sin.  He  stands  as  the  world's 
sinless,  unstained  human  life.  You  probably 
remember  how  Sidney  Lanier  in  his  poem  *  *  The 
Crystal' '  reviews  the  great  figures  of  history, 
finding  in  each  much  inspiration,  but  also  some 
limitation,  until  at  last  he  comes  to  Christ, 
when  he  bursts  forth  in  these  great  words : 

"But  Thee,  but  Thee,  0  sovereign  Seer  of  time, 
But  Thee,  O  poet's  Poet,  Wisdom's  Tongue, 
But  Thee,  0  man's  best  Man,  0  love's  best  Love, 
0  perfect  life  in  perfect  labor  writ, 
0  all  man's  Comrade,  Servant,  King  and  Priest, — 
What  'if  or  'yet,'  what  mole,  what  flaw,  what  lapse, 
What  least  defect  or  shadow  of  defect. 
What  rumor,  tattled  by  an  enemy. 
Or  inference  loose,  what  lack  of  grace 
Even  in  torture's  grasp,  or  sleep's  or  death's — 
Oh,  what  amiss  may  I  forgive  in  Thee, 
Jesus,  good  Paragon,  thou  Crystal  Christ?" 
[52] 


J  esus 

No  man  can  contemplate  the  fact  of  Christ 
without  being  struck  by  the  tremendous  influ- 
ence which  he  has  wielded  in  the  world.  His 
*4ine  is  gone  out  through  all  the  earth.*'  He 
wrote  no  books ;  yet  thousands  of  books  owe  to 
him  their  inspiration.  He  painted  no  pictures ; 
yet  the  whole  world  of  painting,  sculpture, 
music,  even  architecture,  has  been  changed  by 
him.  He  held  no  official  position;  yet  his  influ- 
ence has  changed  and  is  today  changing  more 
vitally  than  ever  the  whole  social  order,  reprov- 
ing greed  and  inhumanity  and  calling  men  to 
social  brotherhood  and  human  service. 

Nor  is  this  influence  a  mere  vague,  persua- 
sive, indefinite  something — it  is  very  intimate 
and  personal.  Thousands  of  men  and  women 
through  the  centuries  rise  up  to  make  confes- 
sion that  he  has  been  the  dominant  power  with- 
in their  lives — that  they  are  what  they  are 
because  of  his  presence.  Here  is  something 
deeper  than  the  influence  of  his  teaching  or  his 
example.  It  is  more  like  the  influence  of  a 
mother  over  her  son,  to  use  a  splendid  illustra- 
tion which  has  only  recently  come  to  my  atten- 
tion from  the  paper  of  a  theological  student. 
The  mother  instructs  her  boy  on  points  of  honor 
and  morality.  She  tells  him  the  perils  of  dis- 
honesty and  the  tragedy  of  unchastity.  In  time 
the  boy  finds  himself  away  from  home  in  a 
great  city.  In  his  poverty  and  loneliness  temp- 
tation comes  to  him.  What  is  it  saves  him?  His 
mother's  sound  advice?    Not  that  alone.    Her 

[53] 


The  Drift  Toward  Religion 

beautiful  and  pure  life  ?  Not  even  that  alone.  It 
is  the  feeling  of  personal  love  and  responsibility 
that  he  has  toward  her  which  makes  her  advice 
and  example  dynamic  in  his  life.  He  does  not 
want  to  be  unworthy  of  her  love  and  trust.  It 
has  been  even  so  with  Christ  down  through  the 
ages.  He  has  been  the  great  redemptive  per- 
sonality of  the  world.  Men  have  been  saved, 
not  by  the  cold  word  of  his  teaching,  not  by 
the  distant  spectacle  of  his  example,  but  by 
warm  personal  love  and  loyalty  to  him. 

There  is  a  great  scene  in  **The  Piper''  by 
Josephine  Preston  Peabody  in  which  the  Piper 
argues  with  *  *  the  lonely  man, ' '  the  Christ  on  the 
cross  of  the  wayside  shrine.  The  Piper  pleads 
to  be  allowed  to  keep  for  his  very  own  the  chil- 
dren of  Hamelin  Town,  but  at  last  he  cannot — 
he  surrenders  his  will  to  Christ's.  Just  out- 
side of  Trinity  Church,  Boston,  there  stands 
a  statue  of  Phillips  Brooks — erect,  manly,  joy- 
ous— preaching  with  radiant  power.  But  be- 
hind him  stands  the  veiled  figure  of  the  Christ, 
who  reaches  one  hand  forward,  resting  it  as  in 
benediction  on  the  shoulder  of  the  great 
preacher.  These  things  are  but  typical  of  hu- 
man experience  with  Christ.  His  personal  in- 
fluence, his  redemptive  power,  have  been  simply 
tremendous  in  the  world — and  never  more  so 
than  at  this  very  hour. 

One  fact  more  about  Christ  crowns  all  that 
goes  before.  He  has  become  for  the  world  its 
noblest  picture  of  God.     How  he  has  illumi- 

[54] 


Jesus 

nated  our  conception  of  God!  *^Who  is  GodT* 
we  ask — and  we  hear  his  words:  *'God  is  a 
Spirit  and  they  that  worship  him  must  wor- 
ship in  spirit  and  in  truth.''  *'But  where  is 
God?"  we  ask.  *'Here,"  says  Jesus;  ^^here  in 
the  rain  which  he  causes  to  fall  on  the  just  and 
the  unjust;  here  in  the  sparrows,  not  one  of 
which  falls  without  his  notice;  here  in  the 
lilies  of  the  field,  which  are  clothed  by  his  love 
and  wisdom."  *^But  what  is  God's  attitude  to- 
ward men?"  we  ask.  And  his  words  are  like 
music  in  our  ears  as  he  tells  us  the  parable  of 
the  Prodigal  Son.  *  *  God  is  like  that, ' '  he  says ; 
**God  is  a  loving  Father;  when  ye  pray  say: 
*Our  Father.'  "  *^But  we  crave  for  more," 
our  hearts  cry  out,  **Show  us  the  Father" — 
and  his  answer  peals  forth,  **He  that  hath  seen 
me  hath  seen  the  Father." 

And,  explain  it  as  you  will,  this  has  actually 
come  to  pass.  Jesus  has  become  for  the  world 
its  picture  of  God.  *^  After  Jesus  it  is  his  reli- 
gion or  no  religion,"  says  a  great  German 
scholar.  The  fact  is  that  the  world  today  thinks 
of  God  in  terms  of  Jesus  Christ.  God  cannot 
be  less  than  Jesus;  he  must  be  like  Jesus — 
and  more.    Our  God  is  an  infinite  Christ ! 

Behind  all  this  there  lies  the  marvellous  self- 
consciousness  of  Jesus.  He  had  a  realization 
of  his  relationship  with  God,  and  the  overflow- 
ing power  which  resulted  from  it  is  central  in 
his  life.  Upon  the  lips  of  what  other  character 
in  history  can  you  put  such  words  as  these: 

[55] 


The  Drift  Toward  Religion 

'*I  am  the  light  of  the  world:  he  that  followeth 
me  shall  not  walk  in  darkness, ' '  *  *  Come  unto  me 
all  ye  that  labor  and  are  heavy  laden  and  I  will 
give  you  rest,  take  my  yoke  upon  you  and  learn 
of  me  for  I  am  meek  and  lowly  in  heart  and 
ye  shall  find  rest  unto  your  souls''!  Yet 
these  words  do  not  sound  immodest  or  pre- 
sumptuous on  the  lips  of  Jesus — they  sim- 
I)ly  express  the  experience  of  humanity  with 
him. 

What  shall  we  say  concerning  such  a  life  as 
this?  What  answer  shall  we  make  to  such  a 
remarkable  and  cumulative  series  of  facts! 
How  shall  we  classify  such  a  personality? 
What  else  can  we  say  than  that  he  was  divine, 
that  in  Jesus  God  revealed  himself  in  terms  of 
humanity,  that  he  is  the  supreme  expression  in 
human  form  of  the  life  and  character  of  God? 
**God  was  in  him  reconciling  the  world  unto 
himself.'*  **And  so  the  Word  became  flesh  and 
dwelt  among  us  full  of  grace  and  truth  and  we 
behold  his  glory,  glory  as  of  the  only  begotten 
of  the  Father." 

But  along  with  this  sense  of  the  divinity  of 
Christ  there  goes  a  great  inspiration,  a  vision 
which  may  well  make  us  all  pause  and  tremble. 
Divinity  is  not  something  apart  from  humanity 
— the  divine  life  which  dwelt  in  Jesus  in  all 
its  fulness  dwells  also  in  you  and  me.  Our  lives 
too  are  a  part  of  the  life  of  God.  That  electric 
current  which  in  Jesus  became  incandescent, 
to  borrow  Winston  Churchill's  figure,  thrills 

[56] 


J  esus 

through  us  also.  He  was  given  to  us  to  show 
us  what  a  divine  humanity  might  be.  We  are 
to  attain  *'unto  the  fulness  of  the  stature  of 
Chrisf  He  is  at  last  to  be  *'The  first  born 
among  many  brethren.*'  What  Jesus  is  hu- 
manity shall  at  last  become  I 

You  have  noticed,  doubtless,  that  I  have  said 
nothing  about  the  virgin  birth.  There  is  very 
little  that  needs  to  be  said.  It  has  no  bearing 
on  my  faith  in  the  divinity  of  Christ.  He  was 
divine  because  of  his  character,  his  personality 
— not  because  of  the  origin  of  his  physical 
body.  Did  he  have  two  human  parents!  Did 
he  have  only  one?  Settle  it  for  yourselves  ac- 
cording to  the  evidence.  It  is  purely  a  his- 
torical question  and  has  no  bearing  on  the 
authority  of  Jesus.  You  might  be  able  to  prove 
beyond  possibility  of  questioning  that  he  was 
born  without  any  human  parents  at  all — and 
yet  we  would  not  worship  him  unless  he  had 
also  been  all  that  he  was  in  his  character  and 
teaching.  You  may  decide  that  the  evidence  for 
the  virgin  birth  is  so  slender  that  it  is  impera- 
tive for  you  to  think  of  Jesus  as  born  like  all 
the  rest  of  us,  of  two  human  parents.  Per- 
sonally, I  should  welcome  that  conclusion,  for 
it  would  only  the  more  definitely  make  his 
divinity  a  moral  and  spiritual  thing.  It  would 
make  the  fact  of  the  incarnation  only  more 
genuine  and  thoroughgoing.  It  would  bring  him 
closer  to  our  common  humanity  in  his  origin, 
and  therefore  make  the  possibility  of  following 

[57] 


The  Drift  Toward  Religion 

him  up  the  heights  all  the  stronger.  But  at  the 
same  time  it  seems  only  reasonable  to  feel  that 
so  remarkable  a  life  may  well  have  come  into 
the  world  in  a  remarkable  way,  and  I  believe 
that  in  the  annunciation  we  have  an  echo  of  a 
wonderful  experience  which  came  to  Mary  and 
which  ought  to  become  the  experience  of  every 
mother — '*For  lo  the  Holy  Spirit  shall  come 
upon  thee  and  the  power  of  the  Most  High  shall 
overshadow  thee.*'  When  we  look  at  things 
with  clear  eyes  we  shall  see  that  a  birth  by  two 
parents  is  just  as  miraculous — involves  the 
presence  and  power  of  God  just  as  truly — as 
would  a  birth  by  only  one  human  parent.  The 
world  can  easily  afford  to  dispense  with  the  idea 
that  Jesus  had  a  physical  birth  different  from 
ours,  if  in  return  it  can  gain  potentially  for 
every  mother  the  experience  of  Mary  of  the 
nearness  and  presence  of  God  in  the  great  mir- 
acle of  bringing  a  new  life  and  personality  into 
the  world. 

You  have  doubtless  noticed  also  that  I  have 
said  nothing  about  the  miracles  of  Jesus.  This 
has  been  a  deliberate  omission  because  I  do 
not  regard  them  as  primary  evidence  for  his 
divinity.  I  believe  that  unusual  events,  which 
we  call  miracles,  accompanied  the  life  of  Jesus. 
Given  so  remarkable  a  personality,  the  miracles 
become  only  the  inevitable  overflow  of  its  in- 
fluence in  the  world.  A  little  boy  learns  to  play 
a  violin — becomes  proficient  enough  to  play,  let 
us  say,  HandePs  ** Largo'*  with  fair  accuracy. 

[58] 


J  esus 

The  time  is  correct,  the  notes  are  true.  We 
compliment  the  performance.  But  let  a  great 
master  of  the  violin  appear.  Let  Kubelik  or 
Ysaye  play  HandePs  ** Largo.'*  What  hap- 
pens? *^  Tears  are  in  our  eyes  and  in  our  ears 
the  murmur  of  a  thousand  years!*'  We  see 
a  great  river  rolling  to  the  sea,  we  feel  anew 
the  nobility  of  life,  our  experience  is  one  of 
spiritual  renewal  and  we  come  back  to  the  con- 
cert hall  when  the  last  note  dies  away  as  those 
who  have  returned  from  a  far  country.  Our 
ordinary  human  lives  are  like  a  little  boy  play- 
ing his  violin.  The  results  are  very  modest  and 
limited.  But  Jesus  was  a  master  of  life.  From 
him  no  such  meager  results  could  possibly  be 
expected.  The  miracles  are  exactly  what  we 
should  expect. 

But  while  I  believe  the  miracles  of  healing, 
I  do  not  base  my  faith  in  the  divinity  of  Christ 
upon  them.  His  power  to  achieve  results  be- 
yond ordinary  human  experience  does  not  guar- 
antee his  divinity,  for  if  he  had  worked  miracles 
ten  times  greater  than  any  recorded  in  the  New 
Testament  and  had  not  been  at  the  same  time 
a  good  man,  we  should  not  build  churches  in  his 
name  or  worship  him  today!  It  is  not  power 
that  commands  the  allegiance  of  thoughtful 
men;  it  is  the  moral  and  spiritual  principles 
which  direct  the  use  of  whatever  measure  of 
power  may  be  given. 

One  miracle,  however,  deserves  special  men- 
tion— the  resurrection.    In  some  way  after  the 

[59] 


The  Drift  Toward  Religion 

death  on  Calvary  Jesus  came  back  to  his  dis- 
ciples, who  were  scattered,  discouraged,  beaten, 
and  convinced  them  that  he  was  not  holden  of 
death  but  was  still  alive.  The  accounts  of  the 
resurrection  are  not  clear  nor  harmonious. 
Some  of  them  emphasize  a  reanimation  of  his 
physical  body,  yet  he  did  not  resume  the  old 
physical  life.  Through  the  stories  runs  an- 
other tendency  which  has  always  appealed  to 
me  more  strongly  than  the  emphasis  on  his 
physical  body — the  emphasis  on  his  spiritual 
body — the  emphasis  on  his  spiritual  presence. 
Mary  suddenly  finds  him  with  her  in  the  Gar- 
den, the  two  on  the  Emmaus  road  find  them- 
selves not  alone  but  walking  with  him,  Paul 
meets  him  on  the  desert  road  leading  to  Damas- 
cus. This  experience  with  Jesus  was  the  most 
conspicuous  element  in  very  early  Christian 
preaching.  Explain  the  resurrection  how  you 
will,  the  fact  remains  that  the  supreme  effect 
that  Jesus  had  upon  his  disciples  was  to  con- 
vince them  that  he  had  risen  from  the  dead  and 
was  alive  again  f  orevermore. 

One  important  subject,  inseparably  connected 
with  our  thought  of  Christ,  has  been  deliber- 
ately left  to  the  last — the  atonement.  Why  did 
Jesus  die  upon  the  cross!  Various  answers 
have  been  given  at  different  times  in  the  his- 
tory of  the  Church.  The  earliest  disciples 
simply  pointed  to  the  great  fifty-third  chapter 
of  Isaiah  with  its  picture  of  the  suffering  serv- 
ant of  Jehovah  and  said  that  Jesus  died  in 

[60] 


J  esus 

fulfillment  of  prophecy.  Later  other  explana- 
tions arose:  that  he  died  to  pay  humanity's 
debt  to  God  incurred  by  Adam's  sin;  that  he 
died  to  satisfy  the  divine  justice  by  receiving 
on  himself  the  punishment  due  the  sin  of  the 
world.  God,  having  received  payment,  having 
exacted  justice,  was  then,  men  said,  in  a  posi- 
tion to  forgive  men  and  reconciliation  between 
God  and  man  became  possible. 

None  of  these  theories  appeals  to  the  modern 
point  of  view.  They  are  too  legalistic.  They 
seem  to  concern  a  God  who  is  an  immense  Shy- 
lock  or  an  implacable  judge  interested  in  ab- 
stract laws,  rather  than  God  the  Father  of  his 
children  as  revealed  by  Jesus.  What  then? 
Shall  we  take  the  crosses  from  off  our  churches 
and  cease  to  sing 

"In  the  Cross  of  Christ  I  glory- 
Towering  o'er  the  wrecks  of  time?" 

Not  SO.  Such  a  sacrifice  would  be  as  pathetic  as 
it  is  needless. 

Behind  every  great  doctrine  of  the  past,  how- 
ever crudely  or  even  repulsively  stated,  there 
lurks  a  great  idea — a  truth  dear  and  necessary 
to  humanity.  The  atonement  is  true;  it  only 
requires  a  modern  interpretation  to  release 
once  more  in  the  world  the  tremendous  power 
which  it  holds.  What  is  that  interpretation? 
Something  like  this :  Jesus'  death  on  the  cross 
is  not  an  isolated  event;  it  is  rather  the  sym- 
bolic and  supreme  expression  of  the  ever-pres- 

[61] 


The  Drift   Toward  Religion 

ent  and  dominant  spirit  of  his  life — of  service 
for  humanity  in  a  spirit  of  absolute  love  and 
self-sacrifice.  That  spirit  came  to  its  final 
dramatic  climax  in  the  laying  do^vn  of  his  own 
life.  That  act  and  all  that  lies  behind  it  in  the 
years  of  patient  self-giving  in  Galilean  villages 
and  on  the  streets  of  Jerusalem  do  effect  a  rec- 
onciliation between  man  and  God.  But  howl 
By  changing  the  mind  of  God?  Not  in  the 
least !  God 's  mind  did  not  need  to  be  changed. 
He  has  always  loved  and  sought  his  wandering 
children.  How  then?  By  changing  our  mind. 
Jesus  died  not  to  make  God  good  but  to  make 
us  good ! 

**But,''  some  one  asks,  *^how  does  the  spec- 
tacle of  Jesus'  life  of  self-sacrifice  culminat- 
ing on  Calvary  make  us  good?'*  Only  by 
touching  our  lives  with  a  divine  purpose  to  live 
in  the  same  spirit  of  self-sacrifice  and  join  Jesus 
in  his  search  for  and  service  to  God's  lost  chil- 
dren. The  world  is  not  to  be  saved  by  Jesus 
alone,  not  by  his  three  hours'  agony  on  the 
cross  merely,  but  by  the  thousands  of  men  and 
women  who  themselves  become  saviors  and  give 
themselves  unselfishly  even  as  did  he.  This 
young  medical  student  in  London  is  to  hear  the 
call  of  the  deep-sea  fishermen  and  give  his  life 
to  the  people  on  the  coast  of  Labrador.  This 
young  woman  is  to  respond  to  the  need  of  the 
great  city,  and  spend  her  life  in  the  nineteenth 
ward  in  Chicago  as  a  friend  and  helper  of  the 
foreigner  and  the  forgotten.  This  young  Scotch 

[62] 


Jesus 

weaver  is  to  die  on  his  knees  in  the  little  Afri- 
can village,  that  slavery  may  cease  and  brother- 
hood be  born.  Thousands  of  nameless  and 
humble  souls  shall  in  the  spirit  of  the  cross 
give  themselves  not  to  selfish  ends  but  to  un- 
selfish service  in  cottages  and  hospitals  and 
workshops.  And  so  Christ  shall  be  redupli- 
cated in  a  myriad  of  saviors  and  the  world  be 
reconciled  to  the  God  who  is  a  God  of  love.  Thus 
the  atonement — the  *  ^  at-one-ment ' ' — is  continu- 
ally and  eternally  in  process. 

All  this  ought  to  make  it  quite  clear  to  us  in 
what  essential  Christianity  consists.  It  is  not  a 
matter  of  theories  about  the  person  of  Jesus 
nor  speculations  as  to  the  mystery  of  the  rela- 
tion of  his  soul  to  the  all-enfolding  life  of  God. 
Speculation  is  interesting  and  has  its  place. 
But  a  man  is  not  made  a  Christian  by  coming 
to  any  particular  intellectual  convictions  as  to 
the  nature  of  Christ.  Christianity  is  rather  a 
matter  of  personal  devotion  and  loyalty  to 
Christ  and  his  interpretation  of  life  and  duty. 
If  only  one  is  sincere  in  his  love  for  Jesus  and 
his  desire  to  reproduce  his  life  in  the  world, 
we  need  not  fear  that  such  a  one  will  hold  un- 
worthy views  of  his  Lord.  Continued  experi- 
ence with  Christ  will  lead  him  to  profounder 
insight  and  greater  reverence. 

"If  Jesus  Christ  is  a  man, 
And  only  a  man — I  say 
That  of  ali  mankind  I  will  cleave  to  him 
And  to  him  will  I  cleave  alway." 
[63] 


The  Drift  Toward  Religion 

You  may  begin  there!  But  to  love  and  serve 
and  follow  Christ  will,  I  believe,  inevitably  lead 
you  on  to  the  second  stanza  of  the  poem: 

"If  Jesus  Christ  is  a  God — 

And  the  only  God — I  swear 
I  will  follow  him  through  heaven  and  hell 
The  Earth,  the  Sea,  and  the  Airl" 


[64] 


CHAPTER  V 
IMMORTALITY 


T 


CHAPTEB  V 

IMMORTALITY 

HERE  are  certain  difficulties  in  the 
way  of  believing  in  inunortality.  The 
most  obvious  one  lies  in  the  fact  that 
in  our  experience  no  one  has  returned 
from  the  life  after  death  to  tell  us  about 
it.  In  this  statement  I  am  assuming  that, 
in  spite  of  the  remarkably  interesting  data 
collected  by  the  Society  for  Psychical  Research, 
the  evidence  is  still  insufficient  to  prove  beyond 
any  doubt  the  reality  of  spirit  communication. 
I  believe  we  should  be  open-minded  on  the  sub- 
ject, and  it  is  not  at  all  impossible  that 
evidence  may  yet  be  forthcoming  in  this  de- 
partment of  investigation  which  shall  be  con- 
clusive. But  for  the  present  let  us  assume  what 
is  practically  true  for  all  of  us  in  our  individual 
experience — that  no  one  has  come  back  to  us 
from  beyond  the  grave  to  assure  us  of  his  con- 
tinued existence.    What  then? 

This  difficulty  does  not  seem  to  me  so  over- 
whelming as  it  used  to  be  in  the  days  before  I 
realized  how  imperfect  is  our  apparatus  of 
senses  for  perceiving  reality  and  how  frag- 
mentary is  even  our  best  knowledge  of  the 
universe.     The  world  is  simply  full  of  things 

[67] 


The  Drift  Toward  Religion 

that  we  have  no  sense  organs  to  perceive.  For 
example :  vibrations  which  come  at  a  given  rate 
of  speed  are  interpreted  by  our  eyes  in  terms 
of  light  and  other  vibrations  which  come  at  a 
very  much  lower  intensity  are  interpreted  by 
our  ears  in  terms  of  sound,  but  it  is  quite  cer- 
tain that  there  are  colors  which  we  cannot  see 
simply  because  our  eyes  cannot  interpret  light 
vibrations  above  or  below  a  certain  rate  of 
speed,  and  so  also  there  are  sounds  which  are 
pitched  too  high  or  too  low  for  us  to  hear  at 
all  simply  because  our  ears  are  not  equipped 
to  receive  them.  This  means  that  our  percep- 
tion of  the  universe  is  only  a  fragment  of  the 
whole.  If  the  total  of  reality  be  represented 
by  a  circle  we  compass  it  with  our  sense  organs 
only  by  a  few  small  arcs  here  and  there  on  the 
circumference.  The  fact,  therefore,  that  we 
do  not  see  nor  hear  our  friends  after  they  die 
is  not  final  by  any  means.  There  is  abundant 
room  in  the  universe  for  life  of  a  higher  and 
more  complex  character  to  go  on  right  about 
us  all  the  time  without  our  perceiving  it.  And 
it  is  altogether  probable  that  to  be  set  free  from 
the  limitations  of  the  flesh  is  of  necessity  to 
cease  from  fleshly  means  of  communication. 

There  is  an  illustration  from  nature  which 
throws  some  light  on  this  point.  I  once  read 
a  story  of  some  larvae  at  the  bottom  of  a  pond 
holding  a  discussion  as  to  why  from  time  to  time 
members  of  their  company  that  had  climbed 
up   a  water-lily   stem  to  the   surface   of   the 

[68] 


Immortality 

pond  had  never  returned.  These  dwellers  at 
the  bottom  finally  made  a  solemn  compact  that 
the  next  one  to  disappear  beyond  the  surface 
should  return  to  tell  his  friends  all  about  it. 
Then  one  of  the  chief  spokesmen  began  to  feel 
an  irresistible  desire  to  climb  up  the  water-lily 
stem  and,  in  a  few  moments,  he  found  himself 
safe  and  sound  on  top  of  the  water-lily  pad  dry- 
ing in  the  sun.  Then  a  wonderful  thing  hap- 
pened. He  passed  through  a  transformation 
the  possibility  of  which  he  had  never  dreamed, 
and  before  long  found  himself  a  dragon-fly 
skimming  over  the  surface  of  the  pond,  his 
beautiful  gauzy  wings  iridescent  in  the  sun- 
shine. As  he  looked  down  into  the  dark  sur- 
face of  the  pond  it  came  over  him  how  utterly 
impossible  it  was  that  he  should  ever  penetrate 
its  depths  again  and  tell  the  larvae  in  the  mud 
at  the  bottom  how  glorious  was  the  life  above. 
The  second  difficulty  which  has  almost 
paralyzed  the  faith  of  many  men  and  women  in 
immortality  is  the  apparent  dependence  of 
thought  upon  the  brain.  Modern  physiological 
psychology  has  made  this  dependence  very  clear 
and  evident.  It  has  even  localized  in  the  brain 
different  departments  of  mental  activity,  so 
that  by  injuring  certain  convolutions  you  can 
destroy,  for  example,  the  memory  for  words. 
The  memory  for  faces,  for  tunes,  for  locations 
still  remains,  but  the  memory  for  words  is  gone. 
The  materialism  of  the  age  from  which  we  are 
just  emerging  did  not  hesitate  to  say  that  the 

[69] 


The  Drift   Toward  Religion 

brain  secretes  thought  as  the  liver  secretes  bile 
and  the  salivary  glands  secrete  saliva.  A 
speaker  holding  this  point  of  view  once  said  to 
a  group  of  people  in  a  room  **Give  me  an  axe 
and  in  a  few  moments  I  can  put  this  piano  out 
of  commission  so  that  no  more  tunes  will  ever 
come  from  it,  ^  ^  and  the  inference  was  that  with 
equal  facility  the  more  delicate  instrument  of 
the  brain  could  be  destroyed  and  with  it  the 
music  of  life.  But  an  answer  was  given  that 
same  evening  by  another  speaker  who  said  that 
even  though  the  piano  be  destroyed  the  pianist 
jet  remained,  and  there  was  no  reason  why  he 
might  not  be  given  another  piano  in  another 
room  and  produce  even  more  wonderful  music 
than  before. 

This  is,  to  my  mind,  a  truer  point  of  view — 
the  physical  brain  is  merely  the  instrument 
upon  which  the  soul  plays  its  music.  Surely  that 
Wisdom  and  Power  which  gave  to  the  soul 
this  instrument  can  be  trusted  to  provide  a 
better  instrument  when  this  one  is  no  longer  re- 
sponsive to  the  touch.  After  all,  to  say  that 
the  brain  secretes  thought  as  the  liver  secretes 
bile  is  utterly  linscientific,  for  thought  and  bile 
are  not  in  the  same  category.  One  is  the  physi- 
cal product  of  a  physical  organ  and  to  make 
the  parallel  hold  true  the  actual  physical 
product  of  brain  action  would  have  to  be  put 
in  the  fourth  place  in  the  equation  instead  of 
the  thought,  which  is  merely  a  concomitant  of 
brain  activity. 

[70] 


Immortality 

Let  us  turn  from  the  negative  to  the  positive 
side  of  the  question  and  set  forth  the  reasons 
that  may  impel  thoughtful  men  and  women  to 
a  faith  in  immortality. 

First  of  all,  I  am  impressed  with  the  univer- 
sality of  this  conviction  of  a  continued  life  after 
death.  Wherever  you  go  around  the  world, 
even  in  darkest  Africa,  you  find  some  kind  of 
conception  of  immortality,  and  as  far  back  as 
you  can  go  into  history,  even  to  the  mute  testi- 
mony dug  up  from  the  graves  of  prehistoric 
man,  you  find  this  same  faith  in  life  after 
death. 

The  conviction  of  immortality  is  like  laughter 
— a  distinctly  human  characteristic  setting  us 
apart  from  all  other  beings.  It  attains  to  the 
dignity  of  an  instinct.  "We  are  coming  to  realize 
in  this  day  that  instincts  are  not  to  be  despised, 
but  that  they  may  be  profound  witnesses  to 
the  presence  of  mighty  forces  and  the  working 
of  an  unseen  hand. 

John  Fiske  in  one  of  his  books  gives  a  telling 
illustration  of  the  way  in  which  certain  human 
capacities  have  developed  in  response  to  reali- 
ties in  the  outer  world  which  called  them  forth. 
There  was  a  time  in  the  evolutionary  process 
when  life  upon  this  planet  was  blind,  but  light 
played  upon  it  and,  because  there  were  things  to 
see,  living  creatures  developed  pigmented 
spots  sensitive  to  light  and  then  imperfect  eyes 
and  finally  the  human  eye  with  its  capacity  to 
see  the  beauty  of  the  dawn  and  to  trace  the 

[71] 


The  Drift  Toward  Religion 

courses  of  the  planets.  So,  too,  there  was  a  time 
when  all  living  forms  were  deaf,  but,  because 
later  there  were  sounds  to  hear,  there  developed 
in  the  process  of  evolution  sense  organs  which 
could  interpret  sound  and  music  and  human 
voices. 

The  suggestion  seems  to  me  to  be  a  powerful 
one  that  this  world-wide  instinct  for  immor- 
tality, this  great  craving  of  the  human  spirit, 
has  not  developed  aimlessly  and  foolishly  but 
is  a  response  sent  forth  to  a  great  reality  out- 
side which  is  calling  to  us  so  that  some  day  we 
shall  not  only  hear  the  birds  and  see  the  stars 
but  shall  also  perceive  the  eternal  life. 

A  second  thing  which  helps  me  in  my  faith 
in  immortality  is  the  fact  of  Christ.  Not  only 
does  humanity  at  large  and  on  the  average  be- 
lieve in  immortality,  but  the  supreme  human 
spirit  of  all  the  world  believed  in  it  too.  When 
Jesus  came  he  incorporated  into  his  teachings 
a  clear  consciousness  of  the  life  eternal :  *  *  Lay 
not  up  treasures  on  earth,''  he  said;  **lay  up 
your  treasure  in  heaven  where  moth  and  rust 
do  not  corrupt  nor  thieves  break  through  and 
steal.''  **Let  not  your  heart  be  troubled,"  he 
said;  *'in  my  Father's  house  are  many  rooms. 
I  go  to  prepare  a  place  for  you." 

And,  after  they  had  crucified  him,  in  some 
mysterious  way  he  came  back  to  his  disciples 
and  convinced  them  he  was  still  alive.  As  to 
the  method  of  the  resurrection  I  am  entirely  in 
the  dark,  but  as  to  the  fact  of  it  I  see  no  ground 

[72] 


Immortality 

for  reasonable  doubt.  Something  changed  this 
little  group  of  broken-hearted  and  discouraged 
men;  something  happened  which  transformed 
their  cowardice  and  sent  them  out  into  the  great 
pagan  Koman  world  conquering  and  to  conquer. 
They  said  from  the  very  beginning  with  the  ut- 
most emphasis  that  it  was  because  Jesus  was 
not  holden  of  death,  but  had  appeared  to 
them  and  that  they  knew  he  was  living  for- 
evermore.  I  cannot  but  believe  they  were  right, 
and  all  this  contributes  no  small  reinforce- 
ment to  my  faith  that 

"Life  is  ever  lord  of  death 
And  Love  can  never  lose  its  own." 

A  third  reason  for  believing  in  immortality 
grows  out  of  our  instinctive  and  ineradicable 
faith  in  the  moral  integrity  of  the  universe.  The 
great  fact  of  conscience  is  a  testimony  to  a  con- 
viction as  wide  as  the  race  that  there  is  a 
difference  between  right  and  wrong  and  that 
fundamentally  and  ultimately  the  forces  of  the 
universe  are  on  the  side  of  right.  But,  as  a 
matter  of  fact,  we  do  not  see  right  or  wrong 
meeting  their  just  deserts  in  the  lives  of  many 
of  the  men  around  about  us.  We  have  on  one 
hand  the  spectacle  of  men  seeking  their  own 
selfish  aims,  cynically  and  brutally  treading 
into  the  mire  the  lives  of  their  fellow  beings, 
outraging  the  most  fundamental  laws  of  hon- 
esty and  fair  play  and  then  living  prosperously 
all   their  lives   and  dying  quietly   and   pain- 

[731 


The  Drift   Toward  Religion 

lessly  in  bed;  and  we  see  other  men  who  have 
*  *  followed  the  gleam, '  *  who  have  put  their  lives 
in  harmony  with  the  highest  dictates  of  moral 
integrity,  beaten  down  by  disease,  by  defeat, 
by  treachery,  in  the  very  prime  of  their  man- 
hood. We  see  Henry  Drummond  wasting  the 
last  years  of  his  life  in  a  losing  fight  against  an 
obscure  and  painful  illness  and  Robert  Louis 
Stevenson  banished  to  Samoa  and  finally  cut 
ofT  in  the  very  prime  of  his  productive  power. 
Our  faith  in  the  moral  integrity  of  the  universe 
seems  to  demand  a  day  beyond  tomorrow. 

As  Washington  Gladden  puts  it:  **For  the 
wrongs  that  never  are  righted  here,  there  is 
recompense  hereafter:  the  rogues  that  go  un- 
whipped,  the  hypocrites  that  stalk  abroad  un- 
suspected, the  giant  oppressors  who  gather  by 
tribute  a  wealth  of  continents  and  build  their 
fortunes  on  the  ruins  of  homes, — for  all  these 
surely  retribution  is  coming;  the  mills  of  the 
Gods  grind  slowly  but  no  malefactor  is  done 
with  them  when  man  screws  down  his  coffin  lid. 
Do  not  distrust  that  sense  of  justice  in  your 
breast  which  cries  out  against  the  honor  and 
power  and  fame  which  come  to  greedy,  unscru- 
pulous, cruel  men.    There  is  a  day  after  today. " 

I  have  a  feeling  that  there  is  a  reason  for  be- 
lieving in  immortality  in  the  very  incomplete- 
ness of  our  own  lives.  William  James  has  a 
humorous  passage  in  which  he  sets  forth  the 
different  possibilities  which  he  realizes  to  be 
latent  within  his  life.    How  he  might  have  been 

[74] 


Immortality 

many  kinds  of  man,  from  a  soldier  or  an  Arctic 
explorer  to  a  fop  and  a  ^  Uady  killer, ' '  and  has 
ended  up  by  being  a  gray,  dry-as-dust  professor. 
We  all  of  us  share  this  experience.  Person- 
ally, my  earliest  ambition  was  to  be  a  pirate! 
As  the  disadvantages  of  piracy  as  a  life-work 
became  evident  I  decided  to  be  a  naval  officer. 
This  in  time  was  given  up  for  civil  engineering, 
and  behold  me  now  far  from  all  such  adventur- 
ous careers — an  obscure  sky-pilot  who  only 
now  and  then  from  his  front  windows  looks 
longingly  out  to  the  great  ships  as  they  pass 
through  the  Golden  Gate  out  to  the  Pacific. 

Even  in  the  line  which  we  at  last  choose  as 
our  own  no  one  of  us  reaches  completion. 
Though  we  live  to  be  a  hundred  years  old 
our  lives  are  still  bafflingly  incomplete.  You 
have  probably  heard  the  story  of  the  old  Ger-  " 
man  professor,  a  philologist,  who  had  spe- 
cialized on  the  alphabet.  He  was  dying.  His 
students  gathered  around  him  and  said,  **Our 
dear  Herr  Professor,  your  life  has  been  blame- 
less, one  of  scholarly  rectitude.  You  have  be- 
come the  world's  greatest  authority  on  the 
alphabet.  You  surely  have  no  regrets.''  And 
the  old  Professor  said,  ''My  young  friends,  I 
feel  that  my  life  has  been  terribly  misspent.  I 
have  tried  to  master  the  alphabet.  I  have  been 
too  superficial.  If  I  had  life  to  live  over  J 
again,  I  would  concentrate  on  the  letter  A!"         / 

Why  this  incompleteness  of  life?    Why  does 
it  stretch  out  so  lavishly  and  beckon  to  us  in 

[75] 


The  Drift   Toward  Religion 

every  direction  we  turn?  Why  are  our  achieve- 
ments but  little  fragments  of  the  boundless  pos- 
sibilities which  we  see  around  us?  Personally, 
I  believe  that  this  very  incompleteness  of  life 
is  God^s  pledge  to  us  of  a  continued  life  where 
we  shall  go  on  to  do  the  things  that  here  we 
longed  to  do  and  did  not,  where  the  dreams 
at  last  come  true.    After  all 

"A  man's  reach   should   exceed  his  grasp 
Or  what^s  a  heaven  for?" 

Our  faith  in  immortality  receives  confirma- 
tion and  reinforcement  also  from  the  modern 
emphasis  upon  personality.  In  the  last  anal- 
ysis the  one  thing  which  we  know  most 
surely  in  the  world  is  our  own  self-conscious 
existence.  Descartes,  you  will  remember, 
started  out  to  doubt  everything  that  he  could, 
but  finally  struck  bottom  with  this  proposition 
**Dubito,  ergo  sum'' — **I  doubt,  therefore  I 
am.*'  The  one  thing  beneath  which  he  could 
not  go  was  his  own  personal  existence.  A  book 
like  Professor  Bowne's  essay  on  **Person- 
alism"  is  wonderfully  strengthening  to  one's 
faith  in  immortality  and  helps  to  deliver  from 
the  nightmare  of  materialism.  After  all,  this 
apparently  solid  and  substantial  thing  which 
we  call  matter  requires  only  a  change  of  pres- 
sure or  temperature  to  transform  it  into  liquids, 
gases,  heat,  light  or  some  other  form  of  energy. 
And  when  you  think  the  thing  through  you  find 
that  we  know  energy  only  in  relation  to  per- 

[76] 


Immortality 

sonality.  If  we  believe  in  the  conservation  of 
energy,  how  much  more  reasonable  to  believe 
in  the  conservation  of  personality.  It  seems 
to  be  the  noblest  and  most  mysterious  form  of 
energy. 

Moreover,  the  nature  of  the  human  person- 
ality, as  it  is  being  revealed  by  modern  psy- 
chology, brings  many  hopeful  suggestions.  We 
have  recently  been  hearing  a  great  deal  about 
the  subconscious,  and  have  been  learning  that 
our  personalities  are  vastly  larger  than  the 
cross-section  of  our  waking  consciousness  at 
any  given  moment.  In  this  subconscious  mind 
are  many  marvellous  things.  One  of  them  is  a 
well-nigh  perfect  memory.  I  once  attended  a 
class  in  hypnotism  with  a  group  of  medical 
men.  A  young  man  before  being  hypnotized 
was  asked  if  he  remembered  any  sermon  he  had 
ever  heard.  Being  a  normal  young  man,  he  did 
not!  After  he  was  hypnotized  the  operator 
asked  him  the  same  question  and  he  said,  ^^Yes, 
I  remember  the  sermon  Bishop  Potter  preached 
when  I  was  confirmed.''  *' Repeat  what  you 
remember  of  it,''  said  the  operator.  The  young 
man  stood  up,  announced  the  text,  and  began 
the  sermon.  I  had  heard  Bishop  Potter  preach 
myself,  and  the  resemblances  in  voice  and  man- 
nerism were  so  striking  that  the  experience  was 
positively  uncanny. 

This  subconscious  mind  is  also  endowed  with 
a  remarkable  perception  of  natural  law.  Most 
of  us  have  worked  on  problems  until  we  have 

[77] 


The  Drift   Toward  Religion 

been  tired  out,  have  thrown  our  book  in  a  cor- 
ner, and  gone  to  sleep  to  wake  up  the  next 
morning  and  find  the  whole  matter  cleared  up. 
Many  a  minister  has  worked  at  a  sermon,  un- 
able to  arrange  it  satisfactorily,  only  to  have  an 
entirely  new  arrangement  of  the  argument,  log- 
ical and  effective,  occur  to  him  after  a  night  ^s 
sleep. 

Students  of  hypnotism  tell  us  that  not  only 
has  the  subconscious  mind  a  high  perception  of 
natural  law,  but  it  has  also  a  high  moral  sense 
and  often  remains  more  true  and  sensitive  than 
the  waking  consciousness.  We  have  no  more 
than  a  fragmentary  knowledge  of  telepathy,  but 
this  marvellous  capacity — developed  only  in  ab- 
normal people  now — is  doubtless  also  one  of  the 
functions  of  the  subconscious.  In  this  obscure 
region  also  lie  marvellous  reserves  of  energy 
and  a  great  store  of  instincts  and  intuitions. 

All  these  revelations  concerning  the  marvel- 
lous quality  of  the  personality  help  us  to  think 
nobly  of  the  soul  and  in  no  wise  encourage  us  to 
believe  in  its  extinction.  Many  of  its  capacities 
are  entirely  latent  or  put  to  only  the  most  occa- 
sional and  trifling  use  in  this  life.  Is  not  the 
argument  advanced  by  Hudson  a  cogent  one — 
that  these  unused  capacities  are  prophetic  of 
some  future  life  where  they  shall  come  fully 
into  action? 

Dr.  Worcester  gives  a  beautiful  and  striking 
illustration  in  his  book,  *  *  The  Living  Word, ' '  in 
which  he  suggests  that,  after  all,  we  live  three 

[78] 


Immortality 

lives.  Let  me  condense  this  illustration  and 
give  it  in  my  own  words.  The  first  is  a  narrow 
and  restricted  pre-natal  life  which  the  child 
lives  within  the  body  of  its  mother.  Here  in 
this  dark  world  eyes  develop,  though  there  is 
nothing  to  see.  Here  in  the  silence  ears  de- 
velop, though  there  is  nothing  to  hear.  Little 
hands  develop,  though  there  is  nothing  to  han- 
dle, and  feet  for  which  there  are  no  paths  on 
which  to  walk.  Then  comes  the  great  day  of 
birth  and  the  child  emerges  out  into  this  won- 
derful world  in  which  we  live,  where  there  is 
beauty  for  the  eyes  to  see  and  music  for  the 
ears  to  hear,  where  there  are  deeds  of  helpful- 
ness for  the  hands  to  do,  and  great  roads  of 
service  on  which  the  feet  may  go.  Once  more, 
in  this  world,  great  longings  are  developed 
which  are  impossible  of  fulfillment  here,  *  ^fan- 
cies that  break  through  language  and  escape,'' 
marvellous  powers  and  capacities  that  seem  to 
have  no  adequate  use  or  expression  here.  What 
then?  There  comes  at  last  another  day  of  birth 
— which  men  in  their  blindness  call  death — 
when  we  pass  out  of  this  dark  and  narrow 
world  of  the  flesh  into  the  great  freedom  of  the 
spirit,  into  that  still  larger  and  more  untram- 
melled life  where  all  the  aspirations  and  capaci- 
ties which  have  developed  more  or  less  blindlv 
here  shall  come  to  their  proper  use  and  high 
fulfillment. 

And  now,  in  closing,  may  I  say  a  few  words 
about  the  judgment,  and  heaven  and  hell.    The 

[79] 


The  Drift  Toward  Religion 

best  way  to  think  about  the  judgment — it  seems 
to  me — is  to  think  of  it  as  something  automatic 
and  continuous.  Every  day  is  a  judgment  day. 
The  choices  we  make,  the  directions  in  which  w^e 
send  forth  our  energy,  the  causes  we  support, 
the  people  we  love — these  things  register  them- 
selves, moment  by  moment,  in  the  fabric  of  our 
lives.  When  we  were  little  boys  we  used  to  hear 
about  the  Recording  Angel,  who  sat  up  in 
heaven  writing  in  a  great  book  the  awful  deeds 
of  naughty  little  boys.  We  secretly  hoped  that 
some  of  ours  would  get  past  him  unobserved. 
But  how  terrible  and  relentless  is  the  Recording 
Angel  of  the  new  psychology — not  seated  up  in 
heaven  at  a  safe  distance,  but  seated  in  the 
inner  citadel  of  our  own  lives  in  the  person  of 
this  marvellous  subconscious  memory.  Well  for 
a  man  if  he  hangs  no  pictures  upon  the  wall  of 
that  memory  which  he  is  not  willing  to  have 
look  down  upon  him  forever !  *  *  Judge  not  that 
ye  be  not  judged,*'  said  Jesus.  He  did  not 
mean  by  that  that  we  should  stop  making 
choices  or  decisions,  but  he  did  mean  that 
the  very  judgments  we  make  react  upon  us 
automatically. 

From  this  conception  of  the  judgment  comes 
a  conception  of  heaven  and  hell  which  makes 
these  words  stand  for  something  less  fantastic 
and  more  impressive.  Heaven  and  hell  are  not 
places:  they  are  states  of  mind.  A  man  does 
not  have  to  wait  until  he  dies,  and  then  wake 
up  again  in  the  life  beyond  the  grave  and  pinch 

[80] 


Immortality 

himself  and  say,  **Ali,  me,  let  me  look  about  and 
see  whether  I  am  in  heaven  or  hell  at  last.'' 
Heaven  and  hell  begin  here.  There  are  men 
walking  the  streets  of  your  city  and  mine  today 
who  are  in  hell,  and  we  have  all  known  men  and 
women  who  in  this  world  had  nevertheless  al- 
ready claimed  their  citizenship  in  heaven. 

It  will  be  a  great  advance,  it  seems  to  me,  if 
we  can  get  rid  of  the  idea  that  death  necessarily 
crystallizes  our  lives — that  at  that  moment  they 
become  set  like  a  plaster-of-Paris  cast,  inca- 
pable of  future  development  or  alteration.  I 
believe  there  is  every  reason  to  trust  that  the 
world  to  come  is  characterized  by  eternal  prog- 
ress and  eternal  love.  Possibly  the  new  penol- 
ogy has  something  to  say  about  the  doctrine  of 
eternal  punishment.  If  parents  punish  children 
only  to  correct  them,  if  the  school  principal  is 
allowed  to  punish  his  pupils  only  to  reform 
them,  if  the  judge  of  the  Juvenile  Court  is  not 
so  much  concerned  to  vindicate  the  law  as  to 
save  and  restore  the  youthful  law-breaker,  if 
the  ultimate  goal  of  all  legal  punishment  is  only 
to  protect  society  and  the  only  complete  protec- 
tion of  society  lies  in  the  reformation  of  the 
criminal,  then  the  great  possibility  suggests  it- 
self that  this  highest  human  conception  of  crime 
and  punishment  cannot  be  higher  than  God's 
and  the  doctrine  of  eternal  punishment--contin- 
uing  forever  and  achieving  nothing— is  made 
simply  impossible  in  the  face  of  the  new  penol- 
ogy.   That  the  hell  which  begins  in  this  life  will 

[81] 


The  Drift   Toward  Religion 

continue  in  the  life  to  come  is  altogether  prob- 
able, though  we  must  make  great  allowance  for 
the  fact  that  in  the  life  to  come  we  shall  be  free 
from  these  physical  bodies  which  are  the  source 
of  so  much  of  our  trouble.  But  if  hell  continues 
God^s  love  will  also  continue,  and  I  do  not  be- 
lieve that  that  love  can  be  eternally  set  aside, 
but  that  somehow,  sometime,  every  soul  in  the 
far  country  will  come  to  itself  in  deep  repent- 
ance and  return  to  the  Father  *s  house. 

Dr.  J.  H.  Williams,  of  Redlands,  used  to  tell 
this  story:  A  revivalist  once  came  to  a  New 
England  town  and  swept  all  before  him.  The 
last  night  he  preached  vigorously  on  hell  and 
invited  all  who  wished  to  go  to  heaven  with  him 
to  stand  up.  All  arose  except  the  village  phi- 
lanthropist, a  rather  eccentric  old  gentleman, 
who  was  unknown  to  the  revivalist.  The  ex- 
horter  pointed  his  finger  at  him  and  said  with- 
eringly:  **My  dear  friend,  what  do  you  expect 
to  do  when  you  go  to  the  other  place?''  The 
reply,  spoken  in  a  quiet  drawl,  was  distinctly 
audible  throughout  the  room.  **Well,  after 
what  you  have  been  saying  about  it  tonight,  I 
calculate  to  start  in  and  try  to  make  a  few 
improvements ! ' ' 

Let  us  have  faith  to  believe  that  there  is  no 
corner  in  God 's  universe  where  he  will  not  eter- 
nally be  trying  to  make  improvements! 


[82] 


CHAPTER  VI 
RELIGION   IN   DAILY  LIFE 


CHAPTER  VI 
RELIGION  IN  DAILY  LIFE 

THE  darkest  problem  of  life  is  the  mystery 
of  evil.  If  there  is  a  God,  and  if  he  is  good, 
why  does  he  permit  a  world  to  exist  with  the 
pain  and  suffering,  the  sin  and  sorrow  of  this 
dark  world  in  which  we  live?  Does  it  not  seem 
sometimes  *  *  as  if  some  lesser  God  had  made  the 
world  *^?  Are  there  not  moments  in  all  our  lives 
when  the  terrible  spectacle  of  war,  immorality 
and  greed,  of  man's  inhumanity  to  man,  the 
cries  of  pain  and  anguish,  the  mute  appeals 
from  the  eyes  of  those  who  suffer,  call  us  to  re- 
bellion against  a  world  in  which  such  things  are 
Ijossible  ?    Do  we  not  cry  out  with  Omar : 

"Ah,  Love  I  could  you  and  I  with  Him  conspire 
To  grasp  this  sorry  Scheme  of  Things  entire, 
Would  not  we  shatter  it  to  bits — and  then 
Remould  it  nearer  to  the  Heart's  desire!" 

To  this  dark  problem  two  solutions  have  been 
proposed  which  deserve  attention.  The  first  is 
the  ancient  Hebrew  solution.  It  had  the  merit 
of  great  simplicity:  the  suffering  and  pain 
which  come  into  your  life,  come  as  the  punish- 
ment for  the  sins  you  have  committed.  If  you 
lived  a  perfectly  righteous  life  none  of  these 

[85] 


The  Drift  Toward  Religion 

terrible  things  could  happen  to  you.  This  was 
the  orthodoxy  against  which  the  Book  of  Job 
protested.  That  great  drama  of  the  inner  life 
tells  the  story  of  Job,  a  God-fearing,  evil-hating 
man  upon  whom  fell  terrible  calamities  in  swift 
succession.  His  friends  hasten  to  advise  him 
that  all  these  must  be  in  punishment  for  some 
hideous  secret  sin  which  he  has  kept  from  the 
rest  of  the  world.  Job  protests  his  innocence 
of  any  crime  worthy  of  so  overwhelming  chas- 
tisement and  in  the  great  oath  of  clearing  he 
maintains  the  integrity  of  his  ways  before 
God. 

To  this  protest  of  the  Book  of  Job  Jesus 
added  the  weight  of  his  teaching  when  he  asked 
the  Pharisees  of  his  day  if  they  counted  those 
on  whom  the  tower  of  Siloam  fell  or  the  Gali- 
leans whose  blood  Pilate  mingled  with  the  sac- 
rifices as  sinners  above  other  men.  Yet  this 
idea  that  all  suffering  is  punishment  for  sin  had 
a  curious  revival  at  the  time  of  the  San  Fran- 
cisco earthquake  and  fire,  when  I  actually  heard 
people  in  the  Southern  California  city  where  I 
then  lived  announce  that  this  disaster  was  a 
judgment  on  San  Francisco  for  its  wickedness ! 
Now  it  is  true,  doubtless,  that  honesty  is  the 
best  policy  and  that,  by  and  large,  the  loyalty 
of  any  man  to  moral  standards  makes  in  the 
direction  of  comfort  and  prosperity.  It  is  ulti- 
mately true,  of  course,  that  the  way  of  the 
transgressor  is  hard.  But  it  is  no  longer  toler- 
able for  modern  men  and  women  to  turn  the 

[86] 


Religion  in  Daily  Life 

text  around  and  assure  everyone  who  finds  the 
way  hard  before  him  that  he  is  but  receiving 
the  just  punishment  of  his  transgression.  The 
old  orthodox  Hebrew  explanation  of  the  pres- 
ence of  pain  and  sorrow  does  not  meet  our 
needs. 

Over  against  this  ancient  solution  there  is  a 
new  one,  fresh  and  crisp,  with  the  paint  still 
gleaming  on  it.  It  is  the  solution  presented  by 
our  Christian  Science  friends :  There  is  no  evil, 
no  pain,  no  disease,  no  suffering.  God  is  all  and 
in  all.  God  cannot  know  or  behold  these  things. 
Hence  they  have  no  real  existence;  they  are 
mere  errors  of  mortal  mind.  This  solution  is 
even  simpler  than  the  old  Hebrew  orthodoxy, 
but  it  has  a  very  painful  defect — what  you 
drive  out  at  the  door  comes  promptly  back  in  at 
the  window.  **  A  rose  by  any  other  name  would 
smell  as  sweet,"  and  if  all  the  evil,  pain,  disease 
and  sorrow  in  the  world  are  mere  errors  of 
mortal  mind  we  have  only  to  change  the  form 
of  our  original  question  and  it  still  haunts  us 
as  before :  If  God  is  good  and  all  in  all,  if  pain 
and  disease  and  evil  have  no  real  existence,  why 
did  he  not  create  a  world  also  free  from  these 
errors  of  mortal  mind?  I  don't  care  whether 
you  call  wife-beating  a  sin  or  merely  an  error 
of  mortal  mind,  the  problem  of  what  to  do  with 
the  wife-beater  is  still  before  the  court.  The 
disease  that  laid  low  Eobert  Louis  Stevenson 
may  be  tuberculosis  or  it  may  be  merely  an 
error  of  mortal  mind,  but  in  either  case  the 

[87] 


The  Drift  Toward  Religion 

problem  is  not  essentially  different — Stevenson 
is  gone  in  the  very  prime  of  his  powers. 

I  confess  that  I  have  no  completely  satisfac- 
tory solution  to  this  dark  question,  nor  have  I 
been  able  to  discover  one  in  my  reading.  But 
there  are  some  considerations  which  it  seems 
to  me  point  in  the  direction  of  a  solution,  and 
there  are  some  practical  helps  for  actually 
meeting  the  concrete  problem  in  daily  life  which 
are  of  comfort  and  which  I  can  set  forth  to  you. 
There  is  light  enough  to  travel  by,  even  here. 

Let  us  take  up  the  problem  of  moral  evil.  The 
possibility  of  doing  wrong  seems  to  be  abso- 
lutely essential  to  any  rugged  or  vigorous  mo- 
rality. Goodness  can  only  achieve  the  grandeur 
of  moral  character  when  it  is  not  automatic,  but 
freely  chosen  in  the  face  of  evil.  Of  course,  as 
John  Fiske  long  ago  pointed  out,  it  is  easy  to 
ask,  *  *  Just  how  much  evil,  then,  do  you  think  is 
necessary  I ' '  But  the  question  can  be  squarely 
met:  **Not  a  bit  of  evil  is  necessary;  only  the 
possibility  of  it. ' '  As  a  matter  of  fact,  I  believe 
that  evil  is  not  eternal,  and  that  ultimately  it 
shall  cease  to  be,  not  because  it  is  impossible 
but  because  it  is  not  chosen. 

A  capital  illustration  may  be  found  in  the  dif- 
ference between  a  mechanical  orchestrion  and 
a  symphony  orchestra.  The  orchestrion  is  a 
clever  mechanical  device.  A  roll  of  perforated 
paper  is  fed  over  a  series  of  openings  commu- 
nicating by  means  of  air  pressure  with  vari- 
ous sets  of  musical  instruments — piano,  flute, 

[88] 


Religion  in  Daily  Life 

drums,  cymbals,  etc.  If  the  record  has  been 
correctly  perforated  the  tempo  of  the  resulting 
music  is  mathematically  exact;  if  the  instru- 
ments are  first  correctly  tuned  the  harmony  is 
equally  perfect.  A  fine  orchestrion  is  worth  lis- 
tening to.  In  an  orchestra  the  situation  is  dif- 
ferent. Here  you  have  fifty  or  sixty  different 
players.  Each  artist  has  to  learn  how  to  tune 
up  his  instrument,  how  to  play  it,  how  to  read 
the  score,  how  to  interpret  and  respond  to  the 
conductor's  signals.  The  tuning  up  of  an  or- 
chestra is  an  ear-torturing  experience.  An 
orchestra  rehearsal  with  the  violins  coming  in 
half  a  beat  late,  or  the  trombone  four  beats  too 
soon,  is  filled  with  considerable  error  of  mortal 
mind.  But  in  the  end,  when  your  orchestra  is 
trained,  you  have  music  which  is  flexible  and 
expressive,  which  can  interpret  shades  of  mean- 
ing and  heights  of  aspiration  forever  out  of 
range  of  the  orchestrion ;  for  behind  the  orches- 
tra are  living  human  spirits  responding  to  the 
interpretative  genius  of  the  leader. 

So  I  believe  it  is  with  the  world.  God  might 
have  made  us  all  incapable  of  doing  wrong- 
mere  pipes  in  a  mechanical  orchestrion.  But 
God  has  not  made  that  kind  of  world.  He  is 
making  a  world  which  is  more  like  a  great  or- 
chestra, where  each  one  of  us  must  tune  his  own 
instrument  and  learn  to  play  the  score  and  re- 
spond to  the  signals  of  the  Leader.  We  are  in 
the  tuning-up  period  now.  But  be  patient,  mas- 
ter your  own  instrument,  learn  the  score  and 

[89] 


The  Drift  Toward  Religion 

gradually  the  perfect  music  will  emerge,  even 
as  the  Pilgrims'  Chorus  emerges  from  the  Ve- 
nusberg  music  in  Tannhauser, 

From  the  problem  of  moral  evil  let  us  turn 
now  to  the  pain  and  suffering,  often  unde- 
served, often  so  utterly  irreconciliable  with  the 
way  in  which  we  should  order  the  world  were 
we  in  supreme  control.  Here  is  a  mother  bear- 
ing six  or  eight  children,  doing  heroic  service 
in  the  world,  and  passing  her  last  years  not  in 
peaceful  enjoyment  of  work  well  done  but 
racked  with  disease  and  pain.  Here  is  a  father 
who  has  tried  to  be  a  good  father  to  his  chil- 
dren, only  to  find  at  last  that  they  do  not  all 
rise  up  to  call  him  blessed,  but  that  the  son  who 
bears  his  name  has  dragged  it  in  the  dirt,  and 
that  all  the  last  feeble  years  of  life  must  be 
spent  in  unremitting  toil  to  pay  his  obligations 
and  save  him  from  the  penitentiary.  Here  is  a 
working  man,  who  wanted  to  work  for  an  honest 
living,  breaking  down  with  disease  in  an  unsani- 
tary factory  and  seeing  his  half -grown  children 
forced  into  the  mill.  If  these  are  the  ways  of 
God,  how  can  they  be  justified! 

Probably  they  cannot  be  justified  with  our 
present  incomplete  knowledge  of  the  entire 
scheme  of  things  and  our  limited  outlook  into 
this  vast,  sounding  house  of  labor.  We  can  only 
trust 

"That  nothing  walks  with  aimless  feet; 
That  not  one  life  shall  be  destroyed, 
Or  cast  as  rubbish  to  the  void, 
When  God  hath  made  the  pile  complete." 
[90] 


Religion  in  Daily  Life 

But  in  the  meantime  here  are  some  considera- 
tions which  should  not  be  left  out  of  the  ac- 
count; For  one  thing,  we  need  to  guard  our 
imaginations.  Through  the  wonderful  power 
of  the  imagination  we  can  gather  all  the  sor- 
rows of  the  world  together  and  so  concentrate 
them  upon  ourselves  that  the  burden  is  abso- 
lutely overwhelming.  But  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
the  burden  is  not  so  concentrated.  In  our  own 
daily  life,  when  we  come  to  think  of  it,  we  have 
always  found  sufficient  courage  to  meet  the 
trials  that  have  come  to  us.  Indeed,  there  seem 
to  be  latent  powers  of  endurance  and  resist- 
ance, the  depth  of  which  we  little  dream  of  until 
some  great  emergency  calls  them  up.  In  the 
hour  of  our  darkest  trouble  we  have  not  really 
desired  pity.  We  have  been  too  busy  fighting 
to  stop  and  feel  sorry  for  ourselves.  When  in 
our  imaginations  we  gather  together  all  the  pain 
of  the  world,  we  ought  to  gather  together  also 
all  the  world's  store  of  courage,  all  the  latent 
resources  with  which  to  meet  this  pain.  It  is 
also  worth  remembering  that  there  are  certain 
natural  anesthetics  which  come  into  play.  Be- 
yond certain  limits  suffering  ceases  and  uncon- 
sciousness begins.  It  is  the  power  of  the 
imagination  which  makes  railroad  accidents 
and  steamship  wrecks  seem  so  terrible.  Deaths 
which  take  place  one  by  one,  suffering  which 
goes  on  all  through  the  city  in  isolated  individ- 
uals—these things  do  not  appal  our  imagina- 
tions as  do  a  hundred  deaths  in  a  wreck  or 

[91] 


The  Drift   Toward  Religion 

some  other  accident.    Yet  the  problem  is  not 
essentially  different. 

There  is  a  consideration  of  prime  impor- 
tance, also,  in  the  effect  which  suffering,  defeat 
and  loss  may  have  on  character.  If  we  receive 
these  things  in  the  right  spirit  they  may  ripen 
and  mellow  our  lives.  Certainly  we  turn  in 
hours  of  need  not  to  those  who  have  escaped  all 
fires  of  suffering  and  trial  and  have  lived  a  but- 
terfly existence  in  the  world,  flitting  from  one 
pleasure  to  another,  but  rather  to  those  who 
have  been  down  into  the  shadows  and  who  have 
emerged  with  a  new  light  of  sympathy  in  their 
eyes  and  with  hands  quicker  unto  good.  There 
is  a  vast  deal  of  truth  in  Stephen  Phillip's 
poem,  **Marpessa'': 

"Yet  I,  being  human,  human  sorrow  miss, 
The  half  of  music,  I  have  heard  men  say, 
Is  to  have  grieved. 

Out  of  our  sadness  have  we  made  this  world 

So  beautiful;  Tlie  sea  sighs  in  our  brain 

And  in  our  heart  that  yearning  of  the  moon. 

To  all  this  sorrow  was  I  born,  and  since 

Out  of  a  human  womb  I  came,  I  am 

Not  eager  to  forego  it ;  I  would  scorn 

To  elude  the  heaviness  and  take  the  joy, 

For  pain  came  with  the  sap,  pangs  with  the  bloom.'* 

Possibly  there  is  some  ground  for  faith  that,  if 
out  of  suffering  such  spiritual  fruitage  may 
come,  suffering  itself  is  not  wholly  meaningless 
or  evil. 
This  opens  the  way  for  a  further  considera- 

[92] 


Religion  in  Daily  Life 

tion  which  must  ever  be  a  powerful  one  with 
Christian  men  and  women — the  fact  of  the  suf- 
ferings of  Jesus.  It  means  much  to  us  that  he 
was  '*a  man  of  sorrows  and  acquainted  with 
grief. ' '  If  we  cannot  fully  unravel  the  mystery 
of  suffering  we  can  at  least  bear  it  quietly  and 
bravely,  as  did  he.  I  was  much  impressed  a  few 
years  ago  by  reading  of  the  hospital  experience 
of  a  man  who  was  stricken  down  in  a  strange 
city,  taken  to  a  Roman  Catholic  hospital  and 
operated  on.  As  he  came  out  of  the  anesthetic 
he  saw  hanging  on  the  wall  at  the  foot  of  his 
bed  a  crucifix.  It  brought  to  him  this  inspira- 
tion, that  strengthened  him  through  all  the  days 
of  pain  that  followed :  *  *  He  bore  his  suffering. 
I  can  bear  mine!'*  If  **it  behooved  Christ  to 
suffer  these  things  and  to  enter  into  his  glory*' 
then  our  faith  is  not  groundless  that  suffering 
is  not  the  irrational  thing  it  sometimes  seems. 

But,  after  all,  the  important  thing  is  not  to 
explain  defeat  and  suffering,  but  to  meet  these 
things — to  conquer  them  and  not  be  gently- 
complaining  victims.  Whether  we  like  the 
world  or  not  we  are  in  it,  and  we  had  better 
make  the  best  of  it.  You  remember  Margaret 
Fuller  said,  **I  accept  the  Universe,"  and  Car- 
lyle  commented,  **Egad!  she'd  better!"  The 
function  of  religion  is  not  merely  to  suggest 
theoretical  solutions,  but  to  help  men  and 
women  to  meet  in  a  practical  and  efficient  way 
the  buffetings  of  daily  life. 

Here  are  some  practical  suggestions  for  the 

[93] 


The  Drift  Toward  Religion 

application  of  religion  to  the  every-day  situa- 
tions and  difficulties  of  our  lives.  How  to  live 
above  the  power  of  evil  and  of  sorrow  may 
be  even  more  important  than  a  philosophical 
explanation. 

First:  Believe  in  God, 

This  was  the  answer  that  came  to  Job  out  of 
the  whirlwind: 

"Where  wast   thou   when   I  laid   the  foundations  of  the 
earth 
When  the  morning  stars  sang  together, 
And  all  the  sons  of  God  shouted  for  joyt" 

The  world  all  about  you  is  wonderful  beyond 
your  finding  out,  filled  with  intelligence  and 
power.  Think  of  the  wisdom  that  guides  the 
stars,  that  operates  in  light  and  snow  and  ice, 
that  teaches  the  wild  oxen  their  ways  and  the 
eagle  to  build  her  nest.  Can  you  not  trust  that 
this  wisdom  which  so  marvellously  permeates 
and  guides  the  universe  has  not  fallen  short  in 
your  daily  life?  Can  you  not  believe  that  even 
here,  in  spite  of  seeming  contradiction,  there  is 
a  Divine  Wisdom  which  rules  and  a  Love  which 
watches  over  all?  Is  it  probable  that  your  little 
corner  of  the  universe  has  been  overlooked  by 
ihe  Supreme  Intelligence?  Bryant,  watching 
a  lonely  waterfowl  sailing  south  against  a  gray 
autumn  sky,  is  moved  to  say : 

"He  who  from  zone  to  zone 
Guides  through  the  boundless  sky  thy  certain  flight, 
In  the  long  way  that  I  must  tread  alone 
Will  lead  my  steps  aright." 
[94] 


Religion  in  Daily  Life 

And  Browning  puts  it  even  more  nobly  when 
he  says : 

"If  I  stoop 
Into  a  dark  tremendous  sea  of  cloud, 
It  is  but  for  a  time;  I  press  God's  lamp 
Close  to  my  breast:  its  splendor,  soon  or  late, 
Will  pierce  the  gloom:    I  shall  emerge  one  day." 

Second:  Believe  in  Yourself. 

Believe  in  yourself  as  God^s  child,  as  vitally 
related  to  him,  even  as  the  leaves  are  related  to 
the  tree  or  the  bay  out  yonder  to  the  great  ocean 
beyond.  Believe  that  your  life  has  not  been 
flung  meaningless  to  the  void,  but  that  God  has 
sent  you  here  for  some  high  purpose.  Say  to 
yourself  with  Whitman : 

*  *  No  longer  do  I  seek  good  fortune — ^I  myself 
am  good  fortune.'* 

Believe  that  whatever  happens  to  you  hap- 
pens because  it  bears  you  some  message  you 
need  to  hear.  **Do  not  pray  for  easy  lives! 
Pray  to  be  stronger  men!  Do  not  pray  for 
tasks  equal  to  your  powers.  Pray  for  powers 
equal  to  your  tasks !  Then  the  doing  of  your 
work  shall  be  no  miracle.  But  you  shall  be  a 
miracle.  Every  day  you  shall  wonder  at  your- 
self, at  the  richness  of  life  which  has  come  in 
you  by  the  grace  of  God.'' 

Third:  Replace  Fear  hy  Trust, 

We  all  know  what  fear  does— it  paralyzes 
people  both  physically  and  mentally.  A  fright- 
ened army  is  an  army  half  conquered.    Fear 

[95] 


The  Drift  Toward  Religion 

can  upset  almost  all  the  functions  of  the  body. 
No  person  in  the  grip  of  fear  can  have  either 
physical  health  or  mental  poise  and  effi- 
ciency. What  the  great  fears  do  the  little  fears 
do  also  in  more  subtle  ways.  We  know  the  little 
fears  under  the  name  of  worry.  Worry  im- 
pedes all  the  processes  of  digestion.  It  reduces 
the  size  of  the  capillary  arteries  and  impedes 
the  circulation  of  the  blood  and  consequently 
the  removal  of  waste  tissue  from  the  body.  A 
prominent  physician  said  to  me:  **When  a  man 
comes  into  my  office  complaining  that  his  stom- 
ach is  all  upset  and  he  can't  digest  his  food,  I 
make  him  sit  down  in  that  chair  and  I  look  him 
square  in  the  eye  and  say:  *See  here,  you  are 
worrying  about  something.  The  first  thing  to 
do  is  to  stop  that  worry.*  '' 

If  we  could  replace  fear  and  worry  by  a  trust- 
ful attitude  of  mind  we  should  remove  a  large 
part  of  the  suffering  in  the  world  and  prepare 
ourselves  to  meet  with  double  courage  and  effi- 
ciency whatever  might  yet  remain.  But  howl 
By  the  practical  application  of  religion  to  life. 
Here  is  a  method  worth  trying.  I  don't  know 
altogether  where  it  came  from — it  grew.  But 
I  know  it  will  work.  Every  night  as  you  go  to 
sleep  make  it  a  practice  to  relax  all  your  mus- 
cles and  then  quietly  and  peacefully  repeat  to 
yourself  some  such  little  formula  as  this :  **I  am 
God's  child.  He  loves  me.  Underneath  are  the 
everlasting  arms  and  round  about  me  is  his 
great  love.    As  the  day  is  even  so  shall  my 

[96] 


Religion  in  Daily  Life 

strength  be.  There  is  nothing  in  all  the  world 
of  which  I  need  to  be  afraid.  Because  I  am 
God^s  child  these  are  the  words  that  are  going 
to  govern  my  life ;  bravely,  quietly,  calmly,  pa- 
tiently, lovingly,  trustfully  and  with  perfect 
serenity  and  self-control.'' 

Fourth:  Replace  Hatred  by  Love. 

The  physiological  and  mental  effects  of  ha- 
tred are  akin  to  those  of  fear.  **  Green-eyed 
jealousy''  is  not  mere  poetry — it  represents  the 
ultimate  physiological  effect  of  hatred  and  jeal- 
ousy. Hatred  will  draw  ugly  lines  on  your  face 
and  on  your  soul.  If  we  could  eliminate  from 
the  world  hatred,  the  holding  of  grudges,  the 
spirit  of  revenge,  how  much  of  the  world's  bur- 
den of  sorrow  would  be  lifted!  You  can  put 
away  your  share.  **I  have  never  willingly 
planted  a  thorn  in  any  man's  bosom,"  said  Lin- 
coln. Make  that  the  standard  of  your  attitude 
toward  men  and  then  go  further  and  say, 
**  Neither  have  I  permitted  any  man  to  plant  a 
thorn  in  my  bosom. ' ' 

Fifth:  Work! 

Work  because  you  at  least  want  to  pull  your 
own  weight  in  the  world,  but,  deeper  than  that, 
work  because  work  is  one  of  the  world's  great- 
est sacraments.  Many  a  man  borne  down  with 
his  own  sorrows  or  oppressed  with  the  burdens 
of  the  world  has  turned  with  a  kind  of  blind 
instinct  to  bury  himself  in  his  work.  And  as  he 
worked  dumbly  in  the   darkness  there   came 

[97] 


The  Drift  Toward  Religion 

gradually  light  and  comfort  and  understanding. 
Why?  Because  work  is  sacramental  and 
through  it  we  enter  into  living  fellowship  with 
the  Father  who  **worketh  even  until  now!'* 

Sixth:  Resolutely  Cultivate  Good  Cheer, 

Count  it  a  deep  disgrace  to  be  grouchy  and 
resolve  to  consume  your  own  smoke  and  show  a 
shining,  happy  face  to  the  world. 

"A  naked  house^  a  naked  moor, 
A  shivering  pool  before  the  door; 
A  garden  bare  of  flowers  and  fruit 
And  poplars  at  the  garden  foot; 
Such  is  the  house  that  I  live  in 
Bleak  without  and  bare  within." 

Your  house  of  life  may  be  no  more  attractive 
than  that  at  first  glance. 

"Yet  shall  your  ragged  moor  receive 
The  incomparable  pomp  of  eve, 
And  the  cold  glories  of  the  dawn 
Behind  your  shivering  trees  be  drawn; 
And  when  the  wind  from  place  to  place 
Doth  the  unmoored  cloud  galleons  chase, 
Your  garden  gloom  and  gleam  again 
With  leaping  sun  and  glancing  rain; 
Here  shall  the  wizard  moon  ascend 
The  heavens  in  the  crimson  end 
Of  day's   declining  splendor;   here 
The  army  of  the  stars  appear  I" 

Good  cheer  is  largely  a  matter  of  will-power,  of 
conquering  our  moods,  of  resolutely  treading 
down  self-pity  and  cleaving  ever  to  the  sunnier 

[98] 


Religion  in  Daiijif\\LfffO\'\'i'-^ 

side  of  doubt.  You  doubtless  remember  Alice 
Freeman  Palmer's  experience  with  the  little 
tenement  children  in  the  Boston  vacation  school. 
^^Tell  us/'  they  cried — these  children  of  the 
tenements — *Hell  us  how  to  be  happy  I''  And 
the  answer  was  filled  with  wisdom :  *  *  See  some- 
thing beautiful  every  day;  learn  something 
beautiful  every  day;  help  somebody  every 
day. ' '  Eead  the  story  and  you  will  see  that  the 
prescription  worked  well  in  the  Boston  tene- 
ments. It  will  work  in  other  places  equally  well ! 
Suppose  one  orders  his  life  according  to 
these  spiritual  ideals — what  will  happen?  I 
cannot  guarantee  that  pain  and  suffering  will 
cease  for  you,  nor  that  if  you  are  exposed  to 
smallpox  or  yellow  fever  or  typhoid  you  may 
not  have  to  battle  with  disease;  nor  that  dis- 
aster may  not  come  to  your  business ;  nor  that 
death  may  not  step  within  the  circle  of  those 
who  are  near  and  dear  to  you.  No  one  can 
guarantee  these  things.  Those  who  pretend  to 
do  so  simply  delude  themselves.  But  this  can 
be  guaranteed  without  equivocation:  If  any 
man  will  order  his  life  according  to  these  high 
spiritual  principles  he  shall  not  be  left  a  help- 
less victim  before  whatever  trial  may  beat  upon 
him.  He  shall  have  in  these  ideals,  and  in  all 
they  have  contributed  to  his  life  as  he  has  stead- 
fastly held  to  them,  a  refuge,  a  source  of 
strength  in  the  hour  of  need,  an  equipment  of 
weapons  with  which  to  fight  a  good  fight  in  the 
day  of  battle. 

[99] 


''iyriP':hel^tifp  Toward  Religion 

After  all,  the  test  of  life  is  old  age.  There 
are  men  who  as  they  grow  old  grow  hard,  dis- 
illusioned, embittered,  rebellious.  The  things 
to  which  they  have  given  their  energies  have 
gone  with  youth  and  old  age  is  empty  and 
lonely.  But  to  any  man  or  woman  who  cher- 
ishes these  spiritual  ideals  old  age  shall  be  not 
something  to  be  dreaded,  but  something  to  be 
welcomed  serenely.  To  grow  old  with  these 
ideals  is  to  mellow,  to  find  life  ever  more  inter- 
esting, to  face  death  with 

"      ...    in  my  heart 
Some  late  lark  singing — 
The  sundown  splendid  and  serene." 

Those  on  the  Atlantic  Coast  who  looked  into  the 
face  of  Edward  Everett  Hale  and  those  on  the 
Pacific  Coast  who  loved  John  Knox  McLean 
know  how  serene  the  faces  and  how  beautiful 
the  wisdom  of  old  men  may  be. 


[100] 


CHAPTER  VII 
THE   CHUECH 


J 


CHAPTER  VII 
THE    CHURCH 

ESUS  said  very  little  about  the  Church  but 
a  great  deal  about  the  Kingdom  of  God. 
He  was  more  interested  in  establishing  the 
rulership  of  God  in  the  lives  of  men  than  in  set- 
ting forth  any  husks  of  organization.  He  wrote 
no  creed,  established  no  ritual,  ordained  no 
bishops.  He  left  his  followers  free  to  organize 
as  might  prove  wise  in  each  day  and  generation 
to  hasten  the  coming  of  the  Kingdom.  The 
Church  of  each  age  must  be  judged  by  its  effi- 
ciency in  getting  done  in  the  world  the  things 
Jesus  sought  to  accomplish. 

But  to  understand  the  Church  of  today  and  to 
be  delivered  from  taking  certain  ecclesiastical 
pretensions  too  seriously  we  need  to  know 
something  of  its  history.  The  Christian  Church 
began  with  the  immediate  followers  of  Jesus 
who  considered  themselves  regular  members  of 
the  Jewish  Church,  but  believed  that  they  were 
especially  enlightened  by  their  conviction  that 
the  Messiah  had  come.  These  first  Christians 
had  no  intention  of  separating  from  Judaism — 
they  were  simply  good  Jews  drawn  together  by 
common  loyalty  to  Christ.  They  looked  to  his 
inner  group  of  the  twelve  for  leadership,  and 
[103] 


The  Drift  Toward  Religion 

they  appointed  seven  other  men  to  serve  tables 
and  to  distribute  ahns  to  the  poor  of  their  num- 
ber— who  were  by  no  means  few.  They  gave 
generously  to  the  common  funds,  some  contrib- 
uting all  they  possessed,  though  this  was  not 
compulsory. 

But  as  Christianity  overflowed  Judaism  into 
the  Graeco-Eoman  world  and  churches  com- 
posed largely  of  Gentiles  sprang  up  in  the  track 
of  St.  Paul  and  other  missionaries  the  Church 
took  on  slightly  more  elaborate  forms  of  organ- 
ization. Local  officers  seem  to  have  been  the 
^'episkopos''  or  ** bishop,'*  a  Greek  term  mean- 
ing overseer  and  practically  corresponding  in 
secular  organizations  of  that  day  to  our  term 
president,  and  the  *'preshuteroi,'*  or  elders, 
whose  offices  were  probably  derived  from  the 
organization  of  the  synagogue.  Besides  these 
there  were  deacons  to  look  after  the  poor,  and 
apostles,  teachers,  and  prophets — many  of  them 
practically  itinerant  evangelists.  The  early 
churches  seem  to  have  been  self-governing  and 
were  composed  largely  of  slaves.  It  must  be 
remembered  that  almost  all  school  teachers  and 
even  physicians  of  the  period  were  slaves.  Slav- 
ery implied  social  misfortune,  but  not  neces- 
sarily ignorance.  The  meetings  of  these  early 
churches  were  held  at  night  and  at  private 
houses — Whence  the  Pauline  salutation,  **to  the 
church  in  thy  house'' —  and  the  services  were 
exceedingly  simple.  They  included  a  sort  of 
basket  lunch  called  the  love-feast.   Scripture 

[104] 


The   Church 

reading,  prayer,  singing  of  psalms  and  testi- 
monies. Then  the  inquirers  and  all  not  defi- 
nitely committed  to  Christianity  were  sent  out 
(Latin,  ^'missa/'  whence  our  word  **mass**  for 
the  Roman  Catholic  eucharist)  and  the  group 
of  Christian  believers  remaining  ate  the  sym- 
bolic Lord 's  Supper  together. 

In  313  Christianity  became  a  tolerated  reli- 
gion and  in  325  Constantine  proclaimed  it  the 
official  religion  of  the  Empire.  From  now  on 
the  simplicity  of  the  earlier  days  was  gone. 
Vast  masses  of  people  became  Christians  by 
wholesale — hardly  more  than  baptized  pagans. 
The  Christian  leaders  also  found  themselves 
with  the  whole  machinery  of  organized  pagan- 
ism turned  over  to  them.  At  the  same  time 
Constantine  transferred  his  capital  to  Constan- 
tinople and  left  the  bishop  of  Rome  as  the  most 
influential  person  in  the  West.  Then  grew  up 
feudalism  with  its  ideal  of  a  dual  organization 
of  mankind — a  Holy  Roman  Empire  with  the 
emperor  at  its  head  and  a  Holy  Roman  Church 
with  the  pope  at  its  head.  The  Medieval  Church 
was  the  result  of  these  events  and  forces.  The 
cup  was  denied  the  laity,  the  power  and  impor- 
tance of  the  priesthood  increased,  the  monastic 
orders  grew  apace,  the  saints  took  the  places  of 
the  local  gods  and  goddesses  dear  to  the  com- 
mon people,  Christmas  and  Easter  were  substi- 
tuted for  old  pagan  festivals,  the  bishop  of 
Rome  became  pontifex  maximus  and  it  looked 
as  if  Christianity  had  conquered  the  Roman 
[105] 


The  Drift  Toward  Religion 

Empire.  We  now  realize  that  it  was  more 
nearly  true  that  the  Roman  Empire  had  con- 
quered Christianity! 

Yet  this  great  Medieval  Catholic  Church,  half 
pagan  as  it  was,  had  its  own  share  of  beauty 
and  spiritual  power.  The  great  Gothic  cathe- 
drals still  stand  as  witnesses  of  a  religious  life, 
the  secret  depths  of  which  we  imperfectly  un- 
derstand as  out  of  the  noise  of  the  modern 
street  we  step  beneath  their  great  arches  or 
gaze  reverently  down  their  dim  and  silent 
aisles.  And  St.  Francis  of  Assisi,  whose  life 
had  so  little  to  do  with  cathedrals  but  who  lived 
out  of  doors  along  the  roadside  with  the  birds 
and  the  flowers,  the  lepers  and  beggars,  the 
Wolf  of  Gubbio  and  Brother  Sun  and  Sister 
Water — this  little  poor  man  of  Assisi,  poet, 
philanthropist,  mystic  that  he  was — makes  it 
impossible  for  us  to  count  even  the  Middle  Ages 
utterly  **dark.'' 

After  the  Middle  Ages  came  the  Renaissance 
— that  great  awakening  of  the  human  spirit  in 
all  departments  of  life.  It  expressed  itself  first 
in  literature,  architecture  and  art,  and  later  in 
religion.  Wyclif,  Huss  and  Savonarola  were 
silenced,  but  Luther  at  last  set  Europe  aflame 
with  a  fire  that  could  not  be  quenched.  The 
Reformation  was  a  protest  against  the  veneer 
of  Roman  paganism  and  the  dogmas  of  medie- 
val scholasticism,  and  a  rediscovery  and  re- 
newal of  loyalty  to  the  simpler  Christianity 
that  had  existed  before  the  days  of  Constantine. 
[106] 


The  Church 

The  Reformation  was  not  uniform — indeed  it 
shows  two  distinct  types  and  many  variations. 
One  type  was  rather  conservative.  It  parted 
with  no  more  of  medieval  forms  than  was  abso- 
lutely necessary.  It  is  exemplified  by  the  Lu- 
theran and  Episcopal  Churches  which,  while 
vigorously  Protestant  in  their  theology,  while 
turning  the  service  from  Latin  into  the  common 
tongue  and  banishing  celibacy  and  the  confes- 
sional, yet  retained  the  cross  and  vestments  and 
titles,  the  frescoed  saints  and  stained  glass  win- 
dows, the  church  year  and  the  candles  on  the 
altar.  The  sterner  and  more  radical  type  was 
led  by  Calvin — in  its  most  extreme  form  by  the 
Anabaptists — and  refused  to  countenance  any- 
thing that  might  bring  back  memories  of  Rome. 
The  vestments  were  replaced  by  the  ordinary 
scholar's  gown  of  the  educated  gentleman,  the 
frescoes  were  whitewashed,  the  stained  glass 
windows  broken,  Christmas  and  Easter  ban- 
ished, bishops  and  priests  expelled,  and  not  only 
were  the  candles  taken  off  the  altars  but  the 
altars  themselves  were  pulled  away  from  the 
walls  and  transformed  into  communion  tables, 
behind  which  stood  the  ministers,  facing  the 
people.  The  old  whitewashed  churches  of  Hol- 
land bear  striking  witness  to  the  rigor  of  this 
type  in  the  Reformation. 

Now  out  of  this  Reformation  movement  come 
the  various  Protestant  denominations  of  today. 
The  Episcopalians  and  Lutherans  descend  his- 
torically from  the  more  conservative  wing  of 
[107] 


The  Drift  Toward  Religion 

the  Reformation  party.  The  Calvinistic  wing 
expresses  itself  in  the  Reformed  Church  in  Hol- 
land and  the  Presbyterian  Church  in  Scotland 
and  in  the  extreme  Puritan  party  in  England. 
Out  of  this  last  have  come  the  Baptists,  the 
English  Congregationalists,  and  by  way  of  Ley- 
den,  the  *' Mayflower ''  and  Plymouth  Rock,  the 
American  Congregationalists.  From  these  pri- 
mary denominations  secondary  ones  have 
arisen — the  Methodist  as  the  result  of  a  great 
movement  for  religious  quickening  in  the 
Church  of  England  led  by  the  Wesleys,  the 
Unitarian  as  a  protest  against  the  neo- Calvin- 
istic theology  of  New  England  Congregation- 
alists, the  Disciples  or  Christians  out  of  the 
Baptist  and  Presbyterian  Churches  of  the  Mid- 
dle West,  and  finally  the  Christian  Scientists 

out  of Boston! 

Possibly  it  has  been  worth  while  wading 
through  all  this  historical  outline  in  order  to 
realize  why  things  are  as  they  are  today,  to 
understand  how  utterly  anachronistic  is  the  sur- 
vival of  some  of  our  denominational  differences, 
and  to  be  set  free  now  to  face  the  practical 
problems  which  confront  not  some  little  denom- 
ination but  the  great  Church  Universal.  What 
to  us  are  vestments  or  candles  or  stained  glass 
windows  or  prayer-books  or  the  question  of  ob- 
serving Lent  or  Easter?  In  all  these  things 
we  are  perfectly  willing  to  give  every  man — or 
church — utmost  freedom  to  follow  the  way  that 
may  best  minister  to  his  spiritual  life.    Congre- 

[108] 


The  Church 

gationalists  are  keeping  Lent  and,  out  in  Africa 
at  least,  Episcopalians  admit  non-conformists 
to  communion.  The  Baptists  have  practically- 
given  up  close  communion  and  most  Presbyte- 
rian Churches  are  equipped  with  organs !  My 
own  pulpit  is  on  one  side  of  the  church  instead 
of  in  the  middle  and  I  frequently  use  the 
prayer-book  prayers  in  the  service.  These 
things  are  no  longer  of  sufficient  importance  to 
divide  the  Church  of  Christ  as  it  faces  its  really 
great  task  in  the  world ! 

What  is  the  task  of  the  modern  Church?  To 
serve  the  moral  and  spiritual  needs  of  the 
world,  to  do  the  great  thing  that  was  ever 
nearest  to  the  heart  of  Jesus — build  here  in  the 
earth  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven.  The  Church 
should  stand  in  the  crowded  ways  of  modern 
life  as  one  that  serves.  It  should  be  a  great 
public  servant  in  matters  of  morality  and 
religion. 

In  order  that  we  may  really  face  our  own  day 
and  get  as  far  as  possible  from  the  terminology 
of  the  Middle  Ages,  let  me  suggest  to  you  this 
parable:  The  Church  is  a  great  public  service 
corporation.  It  is  strikingly  like  a  public  serv- 
ice corporation  in  three  ways:  First  of  all,  it 
supplies  great  common  necessities  which  every 
man  must  have.  The  Church  is  a  purveyor  of 
the  water  of  life.  It  seeks  to  bring  light  into 
the  darkness  of  ignorance.  It  dispenses  power 
to  those  whose  moral  machinery  has  stopped; 
it  seeks  to  put  men  in  communication  with  one 
[109] 


The  Drift  Toward  Religion 

another  as  brothers  and  with  God  as  loyal  chil- 
dren. Its  transportation  service  is  tremendous 
in  bringing  men  up  to  the  level  of  high  ideals, 
and  its  educational  work  is  called  for  wherever 
children  are  being  trained  for  life. 

The  Church  and  the  public  service  corpora- 
tion are  also  bound  by  one  common  and  inexo- 
rable law:  that,  in  the  case  of  either,  competi- 
tion is  almost  criminally  wasteful.  Students  of 
social  problems  now  uniformly  recognize  that 
it  is  an  economic  waste  to  have  two  telephone 
companies,  two  electric  light  companies,  two 
street  car  systems  competing  against  one  an- 
other. The  public  pays  for  the  duplication  of 
equipment  and  overhead  expense.  As  one  looks 
at  the  church  life  of  a  typical  city  how  utterly 
foolish  seem  the  location  of  the  Protestant 
churches,  the  failure  to  establish  any  real  par- 
ishes for  which  the  churches  shall  be  definitely 
responsible  and  the  compelling  of  poor  neigh- 
borhoods to  be  religiously  starved  while  rich 
neighborhoods  are  religiously  overfed. 

Again,  the  Church  and  the  public  service  cor- 
poration have  this  in  common :  their  continued 
existence  depends  absolutely  on  the  efficiency 
of  the  service  they  render.  Wise  public  service 
corporations  realize  this  and  so  seek  publicity 
and  maximum  efficiency.  They  know  that  they 
can  put  off  the  day  of  government  ownership 
only  as  they  do  the  work  in  their  field  more 
cheaply  and  effectively  than  the  government 
can.     Since  the  advent  of  the  parcel  post  the 

[110] 


The   Church 

express  companies  have  seen  a  great  light.  The 
Church  has  a  similar  lesson  to  learn.  It  must 
win  the  respect  and  loyalty  of  men,  not  by  living 
on  its  past  reputation  but  by  demonstrating  its 
power  to  render  service  today  and  tomorrow. 
The  world  is  not  going  to  be  interested  in 
theories  of  apostolic  succession.  As  Winston 
Churchill  says:  ^^The  successors  to  the  apostles 
are  apostles. ' '  The  church  that  meets  the  twen- 
tieth century  as  eagerly  and  hopefully  as  the 
apostles  met  the  first  century  is  in  the  real  suc- 
cession. The  world  cares  very  little  that  this 
Church  came  over  in  the  *^  Mayflower '* — it  is 
more  interested  in  what  it  can  do  for  those 
that  are  now  coming  over  in  the  ^  *  Vaterland, ' ' 
the  *^ Olympic,''  the  *' Mongolia''  and  the 
*^Chiyo  Maru." 

Here  are  four  tests  which  modern  life  uncon- 
sciously but  relentlessly  requires  of  the  Church 
today : 

(1)  Is  it  sincerely  seeking  effective  church 
unity?  How  to  unite  the  Christian  forces  of 
America  and  organize  them  for  their  common 
task  is  one  of  the  supremely  important  issues 
of  today.  Denominations  which  think  they 
have  a  monopoly  of  religion,  so  that  no  commu- 
nity is  complete  without  them,  must  give  way  to 
a  respect  for  the  value  and  dignity  of  all  Chris- 
tian churches  and  must  show  a  spirit  of  humil- 
ity rather  than  arrogance.  We  must  have  an 
effective  working  unity  of  all  Christians  of 
whatever  name  before  we  can  face  the  problems 
[111] 


The  Drift  Toward  Religion 

of  present-day  city  life — and  the  need  in  the 
country  is,  if  possible,  even  more  urgent. 

How  shall  effective  church  unity  cornel 
I^irst  of  all,  not  by  absorption.  We  shall  not  all 
become  Episcopalians  or  Baptists  or  even  Con- 
gregationalists.  That  is  the  ideal  of  Christian 
unity  denominations  sometimes  seem  to  hold — 
we  are  all  to  accept  their  standards.  They  take 
the  attitude  of  the  tiger  in  the  jingle : 

"There  was  a  young  lady  of  Niger 
Who  went  for  a  ride  on  a  tiger; 

They  returned  from  the  ride  with  the  lady  inside — 
And  a  smile  on  the  face  of  the  tiger  I" 

But  church  unity  is  not  coming  that  way  I 

Then  there  are  others  who  seem  to  think  that 
church  unity  may  be  achieved  by  what  might  be 
called  the  method  of  the  least  common  denomi- 
nator. The  Episcopalian  shall  give  up  his 
prayer  book,  the  Baptist  his  inunersion,  the 
Methodist  his  presiding  elder,  and  at  last  we 
shall  get  down  to  the  elements  common  to  all 
denominations. 

But  these  denominational  peculiarities  are 
largely  temperamental  and  have  certain  real 
values.  Abolish  them  and  they  would  begin  to 
grow  up  again  next  week.  In  New  Haven, 
where  Congregationalism  is  overwhelmingly  in 
the  majority,  the  local  Congregational  churches 
differ  among  themselves  very  much  as  the  dif- 
ferent denominations  do  in  Western  cities. 
If  not  by  absorption  and  if  not  by  the  method 
[112] 


The  Church 

of  the  least  common  denominator,  how  then 
shall  a  working  Christian  unity  be  achieved! 
The  answer  of  history  seems  tolerably  clear — 
by  federation.  How  was  our  American  nation 
formed  out  of  the  group  of  jealous,  highly  self- 
conscious  colonies  along  the  Atlantic  seaboard 
one  hundred  and  fifty  years  ago?  Not  by  ab- 
sorption— Virginia  did  not  swallow  up  Connect- 
icut. Not  by  elimination  of  all  points  of 
difference — Massachusetts  did  not  make  many 
concessions  to  the  slacker  standards  of  New 
York  or  Delaware.  An  effective  union  came  by 
federation  in  face  of  a  common  peril  and  to  ac- 
complish a  common  task.  Each  colony  retained 
local  self-government,  retained  its  customs  and 
prejudices,  but  each  gradually  learned  to  add 
to  these  things  a  new  element  of  loyalty  to  the 
larger  thing  which  became  at  last  the  nation. 
O  for  some  great-hearted  George  Washington 
to  summon  our  provincial  religious  denomina- 
tions to  rise  out  of  their  suicidal  local  jealousies 
to  meet  the  great  task  of  Christendom! 

(2)  75  it  reaching  youth?  Here  is  this  great 
stream  of  childhood  with  its  never-dying  splen- 
dor and  its  never-ending  song  still  pouring  in 
through  the  gates  of  birth.  What  is  the  Church 
doing  to  bring  to  every  child  in  the  world,  as 
its  life  expands,  the  great  seed-thoughts  of 
Christian  truth?  How  efficient  are  our  Sunday 
schools  and  other  means  of  Christian  educa- 
tion! How  efficient  are  they  in  our  big  strong 
churches!    How  efficient  in  our  little  struggling 

[113] 


The  Drift   Toward  Religion 

churches  I  How  efficient  in  the  tenement  dis- 
tricts of  our  cities,  where  the  streets  swarm 
with  little  children?  It  is  more  important  to 
meet  this  test  than  to  be  absolutely  sure  you 
have  been  baptized  in  the  only  possibly  correct 
fashion.  A  parish  house  where  the  ten  com- 
mandments are  taught  on  Sunday  and  where 
during  the  week  this  same  moral  code  is  put 
into  operation  in  clean  athletics,  wholesome  rec- 
reation and  good-fellowship;  a  social-center 
building  open  every  day  and  night,  dedicated  to 
character  building  and  providing  for  the  youth 
of  the  community  a  better  rendezvous  than  the 
saloon;  even  a  basketball  court  on  a  vacant  lot 
supervised  for  the  welfare  of  the  young  life  of 
the  neighborhood — such  activities  as  these  very 
properly  go  far  to  endear  the  Church  to  the  gen- 
eration in  the  midst  of  which  it  must  do  its 
work. 

(3)  75  it  delivering  a  social  message?  We 
are  living  in  an  era  of  social  reconstruction. 
The  culmination  of  a  great  mechanical  era  is 
symbolized  in  the  completion  of  the  Panama 
Canal.  The  engineering  of  the  future  is  going 
to  be  social  engineering.  Something  like  the 
same  brains,  energy  and  money  that  have  been 
poured  into  the  solving  of  physical  problems 
are  now  to  be  turned  toward  our  social  prob- 
lems. We  are  building  something  more  beau- 
tiful than  any  slender  Gothic  spire  that  ever 
lifted  itself  against  the  sky — ^we  are  building  a 
better  civilization  of  brotherly  men.  The  emer- 
[114] 


The  Church 

gence  of  the  juvenile  court,  the  Pittsburgh  Sur- 
vey, the  Lloyd  George  budget,  the  modern 
drama,  such  a  magazine  as  the  *^ Survey,''  the 
growth  of  Socialism — all  point  to  the  awakened 
social  conscience  of  our  day. 

For  this  day  of  social  reconstruction  the 
Church  has  a  message.  It  is  no  new-fangled 
message  hurriedly  improvised  for  the  occasion, 
but  a  message  deeply  rooted  in  the  past,  even 
as  far  back  as  the  days  when  Moses  argued  with 
Pharaoh  concerning  hours  of  labor,  wages  and 
industrial  conditions  on  the  banks  of  the  Nile ;  a 
message  inevitable  from  the  great  teachings  of 
Jesus  concerning  the  sacredness  of  childhood, 
the  dignity  of  womanhood,  the  supreme  value 
of  every  human  soul.  Whatever  else  Jesus 
taught  or  did  not  teach,  he  certainly  taught 
brotherhood,  not  as  a  beautiful  sentiment  but  as 
a  social  responsibility.  That  every  child  should 
have  a  chance  physically  and  spiritually  to 
grow  up  into  a  well-rounded  manhood  or  wom- 
anhood, that  every  man  should  have  his  just 
share  of  the  product  of  his  toil,  that  no  woman 
should  be  forced  into  any  form  of  slavery,  that 
reform,  not  vengeance,  should  rule  our  prisons, 
that  arbitration  and  justice  rather  than  brute 
force  and  war  should  rule  in  international  rela- 
tions— these  things  constitute  the  social  mes- 
sage of  Christianity  and  they  root  deep  into  the 
very  center  of  it.  If  the  Church  is  adequately 
to  serve  the  twentieth  century,  it  must  deliver 
this  social  message.  It  must  deliver  it  from 
[115] 


The  Drift  Toward  Religion 

its  pulpit  at  the  morning  service  as  of  equal 
dignity  with  the  individual  message  it  has 
stressed  so  long.  And  it  must  incarnate  its 
message  in  practical  service  to  the  community 
by  so  building  its  edifices  that  they  shall  not 
stand  cold,  aloof  and  silent  all  the  week,  but  so 
that  every  day  and  every  night  they  shall  stand 
open,  radiant  with  light  and  vibrant  with  broth- 
erhood and  all  appropriate  forms  of  social  serv- 
ice. It  does  this  on  the  foreign  field  already — 
why  not  at  home? 

(4)  Can  the  Church  transfigure  the  lives  of 
men?  The  world  cannot  be  saved  by  any  merely 
social  regeneration,  though  that  is  part  of  the 
whole.  The  supreme  task  of  the  Church  is  not 
accomplished  until  it  has  brought  the  individual 
soul  face  to  face  with  God.  The  world  is  glad 
Jesus  was  a  carpenter,  but  at  its  deepest  mo- 
ments that  fact  merges  into  the  greater  fact 
that  he  was  the  Son  of  God.  It  is  because 
through  Jesus  we  come  not  merely  to  brother- 
hood but  also  to  God  that  we  cleave  to  him.  The 
parable  of  the  Good  Samaritan  does  not  stand 
alone — the  tenderer  story  of  the  Prodigal  Son 
must  ever  be  bound  in  the  same  volume. 

"Oft  have  I  seen  at  some  cathedral  door 
A  laborer,  pausing  in  the  dust  and  heat, 
Lay  down  his  burden,  and  with  reverent  feet 

Enter,  and  cross  himself,  and  on  the  floor 

Kneel  to  repeat  his  paternoster  o'er; 
Far  off  the  noises  of  the  world  retreat; 
The  loud  vociferations  of  the  street 

Become  an  undistinguishable  roar. 

[116] 


The  Church 

"So,  as  I  enter  here  from  day  to  day, 

And  leave  my  burden  at  this  minster  gate. 
Kneeling  in  prayer,  and  not  ashamed  to  pray. 

The  tumult  of  the  time  disconsolate 
To  inarticulate  murmurs  dies  away, 
WhUe  the  eternal  ages  watch  and  wait." 

This  is  the  last  test — can  the  Church  bring 
men  into  the  very  presence  of  God  so  that  his 
strength  may  flow  through  their  weakness  and 
round  their  restlessness  his  rest? 
'  The  church  that  can  meet  these  four  tests 
shall  endure  and  be  loved  and  honored  in  the 
world,  whatever  name  it  bears  and  whatever 
liturgy  it  follows. 


[117] 


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